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A SHORT HISTORY 



OF 



OUR OWN TIMES 



FROM THE ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA TO 
THE ACCESSION OF KING EDWARD VII. 



BY 

justin McCarthy 



A NEW EDITION REVISED AND ENLARGED 




NEW YORK AND LONDON 

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

1908 



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|UBrlARY of COr 

jj Two Copies Keccv-3. 

FEB 14 1900 
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CLAS&4- XXc. (lu, 



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Copyright, 1907, by Harper & Brothers. 



All rights reserved. 
Published February, 1908. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. A NEW REIGN OPENS 1 

II. SOME TROUBLES TO THE NEW REIGN 16 

III. DECLINE AND FALL OF THE MELBOURNE MINISTRY 36 

IV. THE AFGHAN WAR 44 

V. PEEL'S ADMINISTRATION 57 

VI. THE ANTI-CORN LAW LEAGUE ....... 67 

VII. . MR. DISRAELI 78 

VIII. FAMINE AND POLITICAL TROUBLE 84 

IX. ATHENS, ROME, AND LONDON 95 

X. PALMERSTON HO 

XI. THE CRIMEAN WAR 132 

XII. THE LORCHA ' ARROW* TRANSPORTATION . . . 162 

XIII. THE INDIAN MUTINY 170 

XIV. THE END OF 'JOHN COMPANY ' 195 

XV. THE CONSPIRACY BILL 200 

XVI. disraeli's first reform enterprise .... 214 

XVII. -LORD PALMERSTON AGAIN 225 

XVIII. THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA 239 

XIX. ^ THE LAST OF LORD PALMERSTON 251 

XX. THE NEW GOVERNMENT 275 

XXI. REFORM 294 

XXII. STRIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD 311 

XXIII. IRISH QUESTIONS 339 

XXIV. 'reformation in a flood* 359 

XXV. THE FALL OF THE GREAT ADMINISTRATION . . . 379 

XXVI. LORD BEACONSFIELD , . 397 

XXVII. THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 414 



iv CONTENTS. 

CHAP. PAGE 

XXVIII. mr. Gladstone's administration .... 432 

XXIX. EGYPT AND IRELAND 441 

XXX. THE PARNELL COMMISSION GLADSTONE'S RE- 

TIREMENT 454 

XXXI. COLONIAL FEDERATION SOUTH AFRICAN 

TROUBLES 465 

XXXII. GREECE, BUT LIVING GREECE ONCE MORE . 473 

XXXIII. EMPLOYER AND WORKMAN 481 

XXXIV. THE FAR EAST 487 

XXXV. THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW 497 

XXXVI. NEW MOVEMENTS IN ENGLAND 506 

XXXVII. THE HAGUE CONFERENCE 513 

XXXVIII. THE SESSION OF 1899 519 

XXXIX. NEW IRELAND 527 

XL. THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 532 

XLI. EVENTS AT HOME AND ABROAD 539 

XLII. THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 545 

INDEX 551 



PREFACE 



The 'Short History of Our Own Times ' published some years 
ago brought its story of events down to the parliamentary 
dissolution of March 1880, and the subsequent elections 
which ended in the utter defeat of the Conservative Party 
and the restoration of the Liberals to power under the leader- 
ship of Mr. Gladstone. The 'Short History of Our Own 
Times' was, I need hardly say, designed as a condensation 
of 'A History of Our Own Times,' and was meant to suit the 
especial wants and convenience of the large numbers who 
can find pleasure and profit in the reading of historical narra- 
tive but have not time to spare for much continuous study, 
and are therefore glad to have at hand a condensed narrative 
in some popular form not occupying extended space or elab- 
orate shelves. The 'Short History of Our Own Times' re- 
ceived a welcome from those for whom it was intended which 
amply satisfied the hopes and wishes of the publishers and the 
author. Since the publication of that volume, however, many 
years have passed away full of great events for England and 
for the world in general, and three volumes of 'A History of 
Our Own Times ' have made their appearance, bringing us on 
to the Accession of King Edward VII. It has therefore been 
found necessary to add to the 'Short History' a summarised 
but, as I hope, in every sense symmetrical reproduction in this 
new volume of the story told in the longer narrative. Some 
of the events occurring at home and abroad during that time 
have been among the most important and the most thrilling 
in modern history, and I have endeavoured to make the com- 
pressed version, contained in this new volume, not merely 
accurate as a record, but also clear, suggestive, and vivid. 
I have even thought it right to carry this Short History, as 
I did the volumes of the longer work, so. far beyond the limits 
of exact dates as to give to the reader a forecast of events 
which will make known to him how certain issues that were 
opened during the later years of Queen Victoria's reign came 
to a close in the opening years of her son's rule as Sovereign of 



VI PREFACE. 

these realms. 'I have done my best to trace in this volume the 
development of the arts of peace as well as of the outbreaks, 
the struggles, and the desolations of war. We have had during 
these more recent days some definite and I trust memorable 
attempts to bring about a combination among the great Powers 
of the world for the establishment of an international tribunal 
having for its work the adoption of a common code which should 
hold the war spirit in check arid subject it to healthful control 
from the principles of equity and the spirit of peace. Thus 
far nothing much has come in practical effect from the founding 
of such a tribunal, but it is, to say the least of it, a memor- 
able era in history when the tribunal has been actually founded 
by the co-operation of all the great Powers and of the smaller 
Powers as well, and the principles of equity and of peace 
are thus recognised as entitled to have some legalised and 
commonly accepted control over the destinies of nations. 
'The parliament of man, the federation of the world,' has not 
yet come into genuine working order, but it must not be re- 
garded as a mere philosophical forecast or a poetic fantasy. 
Nothing certainly can be more remarkable in the develop- 
ments of later years than the growth which we can see in 
the influence of popular opinion all through the civilised 
world. Education has been spreading everywhere, and no- 
where more, in proportion at least, than in our own country, 
where the work of genuine national education had been 
strangely neglected even until far down in our own times. 
Now it may be taken as almost a scientific fact that the spread 
of national education in all countries must lead to the develop- 
ment of the arts of peace and the suppression of impulses 
towards the work of war. I have not attempted in this short 
history, or even in the volumes from which it is condensed, 
to enter into any elaborate disquisitions as to the manner in 
which autocratic government and the neglect of national 
education must tend towards the promotion of war for the 
sake of conquest, but I think it would be hardly possible to 
study the history of Queen Victoria's reign without finding 
there some striking illustrations of that general lesson. That 
reign will happily be memorable, above all things else, for its 
contributions towards the arts of peace. It had a literature 
of its own quite as distinct and characteristic as that of Queen 
Elizabeth or Queen Anne. Its poets were of their own time, 
and were not mere echoes of the past. It had a school of art 
all its own, and even the curious pre-Raphaelite movement 
had much of novelty and originality in it, and was not in 
any sense a mere fantastic effort at a revival of a bygone 



PREFACE. 



VII 



school. Science conquered for herself entirely new kingdoms 
during that epoch of expansion, and some of the greatest 
names in its various departments belong to that time. Turn- 
ing for a moment to a different subject, I may remark that the 
French Second Empire, which was in so many of its charac- 
teristics a trouble to Europe, bequeathed through its founder, 
Napoleon III., one lesson of great and practical importance 
when it proclaimed as a part of political science the principle 
of nationalities. That principle has during later years been 
coming more and more into authoritative recognition, and 
it has ever been found productive of beneficent results in the 
systems of government. When the Emperor of the French 
failed, as he often did, to obey its dictates, he brought only 
trouble and disaster on his own rule. We see its happy effects 
in our own Colonial dominions, in Canada, and in Australasia, 
and we are yet, I hope and feel sure, to see its wholesome 
results in other parts of the Empire. It changes reluctant 
and struggling peoples into willing and prosperous partners 
in the British State. The recent visit to England of the 
Colonial delegates, and among them of those who represented 
part of South Africa, gave striking evidence of the healthful 
working of the principle which recognises the right of each 
people to some share in the making of systems for home 
government. Our own times may, on the whole, be regarded 
as having created an ever memorable era in the development 
of civilisation, and I feel it an honour to have had a share, 
however limited and imperfect, in describing its progress. 

justin McCarthy. 



A SHORT HISTORY 

OF 

OUR OWN TIMES 



7 



A SHORT HISTORY 



OF 



OUR OWN TIMES. 



CHAPTEE I. 

A NEW EEIGN OPENS. 

Befoke half-past two o'clock on the morning of June 20, 
1837, William IV. was lying dead in Windsor Castle, while 
the messengers were already hurrying off to Kensington 
Palace to bear to his successor her summons to the throne. 
With William ended the reign of personal government in 
England. King William had always held to and exercised the 
right to dismiss his ministers when he pleased, and because 
he pleased. In our day we should believe that the constitu- 
tional freedom of England was outraged, if a sovereign were 
to dismiss a ministry at mere pleasure, or to retain it in despite 
of the expressed wish of the House of Commons. 

The manners of William IV. had been, like those of most 
of his brothers, somewhat rough and overbearing. He had 
been an unmanageable naval officer. He had made himself 
unpopular while Duke of Clarence by his strenuous opposi- 
tion to some of the measures which were especially desired 
by all the enlightenment of the country. He was, for example, 
a determined opponent of the measures for the abolition of 
the slave trade. But William seems to have been one of the 
men whom increased responsibility improves. He was far 
better as a king than as a piince. He proved that he was able 
at least to understand that first duty of a constitutional 
sovereign which, to the last day of his active Hie, his father, 

1 



2 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. i. 

George III., never could be brought to comprehend — that the 
personal predilections and prejudices of the King must some- 
times give way to the public interest. We must judge William 
by the reigns that went before, and not the reign that came 
after him, and admit that on the whole he was better than his 
education, his early opportunities, and his early promise. 

William IV. (third son of George III.) had left no children 
who could have succeeded to the throne, and the crown passed 
therefore to the daughter of his brother (fourth son of George), 
the Duke of Kent. This was the Princess Alexandrina Victoria, 
who was born at Kensington Palace on May 24, 1819. The 
Princess was therefore at this time little more than eighteen 
years of age. The Duke of Kent died a few months after the 
birth of his daughter, and the child was brought up under the 
care of his widow. She was well brought up : both as regards 
her intellect and her character — her training was excellent. 
She was taught to be self-reliant, brave, and systematical. 
Prudence and economy were inculcated on her as though she 
had been born to be poor. One is not generally inclined to 
attach much importance to what historians tell us of the 
education of contemporary princes or princesses ; but it 
cannot be doubted that the Princess Victoria was trained for 
intelligence and goodness. 

There is a pretty description given by Miss Wynn of the 
manner in which the young sovereign received the news of 
her accession to a throne. The Archbishop of Canterbury, 
Dr. Howley, and the Lord Chamberlain, the Marquis of 
Conyngham, left Windsor for Kensington Palace, where the 
Princess Victoria had been residing, to inform her of the 
King's death. It was two hours after midnight when they 
started, and they did not reach Kensington until five o'clock 
in the morning. ' They knocked, they rang, they thumped 
for a considerable time before they could rouse the porter at 
the gate ; they were again kept waiting in the courtyard, then 
turned into one of the lower rooms, where they seemed 
forgotten by everybody. They rang the bell, and desired that 
the attendant of the Princess Victoria might be sent to 
inform her Eoyal Highness that they requested an audience 
on business of importance. After another delay, and another 
ringing to inquire the cause, the attendant was summoned, 
who stated that the Princess was in such a sweet sleep that 
she could not venture to disturb her. Then they said, " We 
are come on business of State to the Queen, and even her 



CH. I. A NE W REIGN OPENS. 3 

sleep must give way to that." It did ; and to prove that she 
did not keep them waiting, in a few minutes she came mto 
the room in a loose white nightgown and shawl, her nightcap 
thrown off, and her hair falling upon her shoulders, her feet 
in slippers, tears in her eyes, but perfectly collected and 
dignified.' The Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, was presently 
sent for, and a meeting of the Privy Council summoned for 
eleven o'clock, when the Lord Chancellor administered the 
usual oaths to the Queen, and her Majesty received in return 
the oaths of allegiance of the Cabinet ministers and other 
privy councillors present. 

The interest or curiosity with which the demeanour of the 
young Queen was watched was all the keener because the 
world in general knew so little about her. Not merely was 
the world in general thus ignorant, but even the statesmen 
and officials in closest communication with court circles were 
in almost absolute ignorance. The young Queen had been 
previously kept in such seclusion by her mother, that ' not 
one of her acquaintance, none of the attendants at Kensing- 
ton, not even the Duchess of Northumberland, her governess, 
have any idea what she is or what she promises to be.' 
There was enough in the court of the two sovereigns who 
went before Queen Victoria to justify any strictness of seclu- 
sion which the Duchess of Kent might desire for her 
daughter. No one can read even the most favourable de- 
scriptions given by contemporaries of the manners of those 
two courts without feeling grateful to the Duchess ot Kent 
for resolving that her daughter should see as little as possible 
of their ways and their company. 

It is not necessary to go into any formal description of the 
proclamation of the Queen, her appearance for the first time 
on the throne in the House of Lords when she prorogued 
Parliament in person, and even the gorgeous festival of her 
coronation, which took place on June 28, in the following 
year, 1838. It is a fact, however, well worthy of note, amid 
whatever records of court ceremonial and of political change, 
that a few days after the accession of the Queen, Mr. Monte- 
fiore was elected Sheriff of London, the first Jew who had ever 
been chosen for that office ; and that he received knighthood 
at the hands of her Majesty when she visited the City on the 
following Lord Mayor's day. He was the first Jew whom 
royalty had honoured in this country since the good old times 
when royalty was pleased to borrow the Jew's money, or order 



4 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. en. i. 

instead the extraction of his teeth. The expansion of the 
principle of religious liberty and equality which has been one 
of the most remarkable characteristics of the reign of Queen 
Victoria, could hardly have been more becomingly inaugurated 
than by the compliment which sovereign and city paid to Sir 
Moses Montefiore. 

The first signature attached to the Act of Allegiance 
presented to the Queen at Kensington Palace was that of her 
eldest surviving uncle, Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. The 
fact may be taken as an excuse for introducing a few words 
here to record the severance of the connection which had 
existed for some generations between this country and 
Hanover. The connection was only personal, the Hanoverian 
kings of England being also by succession sovereigns of 
Hanover. The crown of Hanover was limited in its descent to 
the male line, and it passed on the death of William IV. to his 
eldest surviving brother, Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. The 
change was in almost every way satisfactory to the English 
people. The indirect connection between England and Han- 
over had at no time been a matter of gratification to the public 
of this country, and Englishmen were not by any means sorry 
to be rid of the Duke of Cumberland. Not many of George 
in.'s sons were popular; the Duke of Cumberland was 
probably the least popular of all. His manners were rude, 
overbearing, and sometimes even brutal. Eumour not un- 
naturally exaggerated his defects, and in the mouths of many 
his name was the symbol of the darkest and fiercest passions, 
and even crimes. Some of the popular reports with regard 
to him had their foundation only in the common detestation 
of his character and dread of his influence. But it is certain 
that he was profligate, selfish, overbearing and quarrelsome. 

It was felt in England that the mere departure of the 
Duke of Cumberland from this country would have made the 
severance of the connection with Hanover desirable, even if 
it had not been in other ways an advantage to us. Later 
times have shown how much we have gained by the separa- 
tion. It would have been exceedingly inconvenient, to say 
the least, if the crown worn by a sovereign of England had 
been hazarded in the war between Austria and Prussia in 
1866. Our reigning family must have seemed to suffer in 
dignity if that crown had been roughly knocked off the head 
of its wearer who happened to be an English sovereign ; and 
it would have been absurd to expect that the English people 



CH. I. A NEW REIGN OPENS. 5 

could engage in a quarrel with which their interests and 
honour had absolutely nothing to do, for the sake of a mere 
family possession of their ruling house. 

Lord Melbourne was the first Mmister of the Crown when 
the Queen succeeded to the throne. He was a man who then 
and always after made himself particularly dear to the Queen, 
and for whom she had the strongest regard. He was of kindly, 
somewhat indolent nature ; fair and even generous towards 
his political opponents ; of the most genial disposition towards 
his friends. He was emphatically not a strong man. He was 
not a man to make good grow where it was not already growing. 
He was a kindly counsellor to a young Queen ; and happily 
for herself the young Queen in this case had strong clear sense 
enough of her ownnot to be absolutely dependent on any counsel. 
Lord Melbourne was not a statesman. His best qualities, 
personal kindness and good nature apart, were purely negative. 
He was unfortunately not content even with the reputation fop 
a sort of indolent good nature which he might have well de- 
served. He strove to make himself appear hopelessly idle, 
trivial, and careless. When he really was serious and earnest 
he seemed to make it his business to look like one in whom 
no human affairs could call up a gleam of interest. We have 
amusing pictures of him as he occupied himself in blowing a 
feather or nursing a sofa-cushion while receiving an important 
and perhaps highly sensitive deputation from this or that 
commercial ' interest.' Those who knew him insisted that he 
really was listening with all his might and main ; that he had 
sat up the whole night before studying the question which 
he seemed to think so unworthy of any attention ; and that so 
far from being wholly absorbed in his trifles, he was at very 
great pains to keep up the appearance of a trifler. 

Such a masquerading might perhaps have been excusable, 
or even attractive, in the case of a man of really brilliant and 
commanding talents. But in Lord Melbourne's case the 
affectation had no such excuse or happy effect. He was a 
poor speaker, only fitted to rule in the quietest times. Debates 
were then conducted with a bitterness of personality unknown, 
or at all events very rarely known, in our days. Even in the 
House of Lords language was often interchanged of the most 
virulent hostility. 

Lord Melbourne's constant attendance on the young Queen 
was regarded with keen jealousy and dissatisfaction. Accord- 
ing to some critics the Prime Minister was endeavouring to 



6 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. 2 

inspire her with all his own gay heedlessness of character and 
temperament. According to others, Lord Melbourne's purpose 
was to make himself agreeable and indispensable to the Queen ; 
to surround her with his friends, relations, and creatures, and 
thus to get a lifelong hold of power in England, in defiance of 
political changes and parties. But he does not appear to have 
been greedy of power, or to have used any unfair means of 
getting or keeping it. The character of the young Sovereign 
seems to have impressed him deeply. His real or affected levity 
gave way to a genuine and lasting desire to make her life as 
happy and her reign as successful as he could. The Queen 
always felt the warmest affection and gratitude for him. 
Still, it is certain that the Queen's Prime Minister was by no 
means a popular man at the time of her accession. When 
the new reign began, the Ministry had two enemies or critics 
in the House of Lords of the most formidable character. 
Either alone would have been a trouble to a minister of far 
stronger mould than Lord Melbourne ; but circumstances 
threw them both for the moment into a chance alliance against 
him. 

One of these was Lord Brougham. No character stronger 
and stranger than his is described in the modern history 
of England. He was gifted with the most varied and strik- 
ing talents, and with a capacity for labour which sometimes 
seemed almost superhuman. Not merely had he the capacity 
for labour, but he appeared to have a positive passion for work. 
His restless energy seemed as if it must stretch itself out on 
every side seeking new fields of conquest. The study that 
was enough to occupy the whole time and wear out the 
frame of other men was only recreation to him. His physical 
strength never gave way. His high spirits never deserted him. 
His self-confidence was boundless. He thought he knew 
everything and could do everything better than any other man. 
His vanity was overweening, and made him ridiculous almost 
as often and as much as his genius made him admired. ' If 
Brougham knew a little of law,' said O'Connell, when the 
former became Lord Chancellor, ' he would know a little of 
everything.' The anecdote is told in another way too, which 
perhaps makes it even more piquant. ' The new Lord Chan- 
cellor knows a little of everything in the world — even of 
law.' He was beyond doubt a great Parliamentary orator, 
although not an orator of the highest class. Brougham's 
action was wild, and sometimes even furious ; his gestures were 



en. L A NEW REIGN OPENS. 7 

singularly ungraceful ; his manners were grotesque ; but of 
his power over his hearers there could he no doubt. That power 
remained with him until a far later date ; and long after the 
years when men usually continue to take part in political debate, 
Lord Brougham could be impassioned, impressive, and even 
overwhelming. If his talents were great, if his personal vanity 
was immense, let it be said that his services to the cause of 
human freedom and education were simply inestimable. As an 
opponent of slavery in the colonies, as an advocate of political 
reform at home, of law reform, of popular education, of religious 
equality, he had worked with indomitable zeal, with resistless 
passion, and with splendid success. He was left out of office 
on the reconstruction of the Whig Ministry in April 1835, and 
he passed for the remainder of his life into the position ol an 
independent or unattached critic of the measures and policy 
of other men. It has never been clearly known why the 
"Whigs so suddenly threw over Brougham. The common 
belief is that his eccentricities and his almost savage temper 
made him intolerable in a cabinet. It has been darkly hinted 
that for a while his intellect was actually under a cloud, as 
people said that of Chatham was during a momentous season. 
Lord Brougham was not a man likely to forget or forgive 
the wrong which he must have believed that he had sustained 
at the hands of the Whigs. He became the fiercest and most 
formidable of Lord Melbourne's hostile critics. 

The other great opponent was Lord Lyndhurst. He 
was one of the most effective Parliamentary debaters of 
his time. His style was singularly and even severely 
clear, direct and pure ; his manner was easy and grace- 
ful ; his voice remarkably sweet and strong. Nothing 
could have been in greater contrast than his clear, correct, 
nervous argument, and the impassioned invectives and over- 
whelming strength of Brougham. Lyndhurst had an immense 
capacity for work, when the work had to be done ; but his 
natural tendency was as distinctly towards indolence as 
Brougham's was towards unresting activity. Nor were Lynd- 
hurst' s political convictions ever very clear. By the habitude 
of associating with the Tories, and receiving office from them, 
and speaking for them, and attacking their enemies with 
argument and sarcasm, Lyndhurst finally settled down into 
all the ways of Toryism. But nothing in his varied history 
showed that he had any particular preference that way ; and 
there were many passages in his career when it would seem 



8 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. I. 

as if a turn of chance decided what part of political life he 
was to follow. As a keen debater he was perhaps hardly ever 
excelled in Parliament ; but he had neither the passion nor the 
genius of the orator ; and his capacity was narrow indeed in 
its range when compared with the astonishing versatility and 
omnivorous mental activity of Brougham. As a speaker he 
was always equal. He seemed to know no varying moods or 
fits of mental lassitude. Whenever he spoke he reached at 
once the same high level as a debater. The very fact may 
in itself perhaps be taken as conclusive evidence that he was 
not an orator. The higher qualities of the orator are no more 
to be summoned at will than those of the poet. 

These two men were without any comparison the two lead- 
ing debaters in the House of Lords. Lord Melbourne had 
not at that time in the Upper House a single man of first 
class or even of second class debating power on the bench of 
the ministry. An able writer has well remarked that the 
position of the Ministry in the House of Lords might be com- 
pared to that of a water-logged wreck into which enemiea 
from all quarters are pouring their broadsides. 

The law at that time made it necessary that a new Parlia- 
ment should be summoned on the accession of the new 
Sovereign. The result was not a very marked alteration 
in the condition of parties ; but on the whole the ad- 
vantage was with the Tories. Somewhere about this time, 
it may be remarked, the use of the word ' Conservative ' 
to describe the latter political party first came into fashion. 
During the elections for the new Parliament, Lord John 
Russell, speaking at a public dinner at Stroud, made allusion 
to the new name which his opponents were beginning to 
affect for their party. * If that,' he said, ' is the name that 
pleases them, if they say that the old distinction of Whig and 
Tory should no longer be kept up, I am ready, in opposition 
to their name of Conservative, to take the name of Reformer, 
and to stand by that opposition.' 

The new Parliament on its assembling seems to have 
gathered in the Commons an unusually large number of gifted 
and promising men. Mr. Grote, the historian of Greece, sat 
for the City of London. The late Lord Lytton. then Mr. 
Edward Lytton Bulwer, had a seat, an advanced Radical at 
that day. Mr. Disraeli came then into Parliament for the first 
time. Charles Buller, full of high spirits, brilliant humour, 
and the very inspiration of keen good sense, seemed on the sure 



ch. I. A NEW REIGN OPENS. 9 

way to that career of renown which a premature death cut 
short. Sir William Molesworth was an excellent type of the 
school which in later days was called the Philosophical Eadical. 
Another distinguished member of the same school, Mr. Roe- 
buok, had lost his seat, and was for the moment an outsider. 
Mr. Gladstone had been already five years in Parliament. The 
late Lord Carlisle, then Lord Morpeth, was looked upon as a 
graceful specimen of the literary and artistic young nobleman, 
who also cultivates a little politics for his intellectual amuse- 
ment. Lord John Eussell had but lately begun his career as 
leader of the House of Commons. Lord Palmerston was 
Foreign Secretary, but had not even then got the credit of the 
great ability which he possessed. Only those who knew him 
very well had any idea of the capacity for governing Parliament 
and the country which he was soon afterwards to display. Sir 
Robert Peel was leader of the Conservative party. Lord Stan- 
ley, the late Lord Derby, was still in the House of Commons. 
He had not long before broken definitely with the Whigs on 
the question of the Irish ecclesiastical establishment, and had 
passed over to that Conservative party of which he afterwards 
became the most influential leader, and the most powerful 
Parliamentary orator. 

The ministry was not very strong in the House of Commons. 
Its adherents were but loosely held together. Sir Robert 
Peel, the leader of the Opposition, was by far the most 
powerful man in the House. Added to his great qualities as an 
administrator and a Parliamentary debater, he had the virtue, 
then very rare among Conservative statesmen, of being a sound 
and clear financier, with a good grasp of the fundamental prin- 
ciples of political economy. His high austere character made 
him respected by opponents as well as by friends. He had not 
perhaps many intimate friends. His temperament was cold, 
or at least its heat was self-contained ; he threw out no genial 
glow to those around him. He was by nature a reserved and 
shy man, in whose manners shyness took the form of pompous- 
ness and coldness. It is certain that he had warm and gene- 
rous feelings, but his very sensitiveness only led him to disguise 
them. The contrast between his emotions and his lack of 
demonstrativeness created in him a constant artificiality which 
often seemed mere awkwardness. It was in the House of Com- 
mons that his real genius and character displayed themselves. 
Peel was a perfect master of the House oi Commons. He was 
as great an orator as any man could be who addresses himself 

1* 



to A SHORT HISTORY OP OUR OWN TIMES, CH. I 

to the House of Commons, its ways and its purposes alone.. 
Sir Eobert Peel had little imagination, and almost none of that 
passion which in eloquence sometimes supplies its place. His 
style was clear, strong, and stately ; full of various argument 
and apt illustration drawn from books and from the world of 
politics and commerce. He followed a difficult argument home 
to its utter conclusions ; and if it had in it any lurking fallacy, 
he brought out the weakness into the clearest light, often with 
a happy touch of humour and quiet sarcasm. His speeches 
might be described as the very perfection of good sense and 
high principle clothed in the most impressive language. But 
they were something more peculiar than this, for they were so 
constructed, in their argument and their style alike, as to touch 
the very core of the intelligence of the House of Commons. 
They told of the feelings and the inspiration of Parliament 
as the ballad-music of a country tells of its scenery and its 
national sentiments. 

Lord Stanley was a far more energetic and impassioned 
speaker than Sir Eobert Peel, and perhaps occasionally, in his 
later career, came now and then nearer to the height of genuine 
oratory. But Lord Stanley was little more than a splendid 
Parliamentary partisan, even when, long after, he was Prime 
Minister of England. He had very little indeed of that class 
of information which the modern world requires of its states- 
men and leaders. Of political economy, of finance, of the 
development and the discoveries of modern science, he knew 
almost as little as it is possible for an able and energetic man 
to know who lives in the throng of active life and hears what 
people are talking of around him. He once said good- 
humouredly of himself, that he was brought up in the pre- 
scientific period. He had, in fact, what would have been called 
at an earlier day an elegant scholarship ; he had a considerable 
knowledge of the politics of his time in most European coun- 
tries, an energetic intrepid spirit, and with him the science of 
Parliamentary debate seemed to be an instinct. There was 
no speaker on the ministerial benches at that time who could 
for a moment be compared with him. 

Lord John Bussell, who had the leadership of the party in 
the House of Commons, was really a much stronger man than 
he seemed to be. He had a character for dauntless courage 
and confidence among his friends ; for boundless self-conceit 
among his enemies. He had in truth much less genius than 
his friends and admirers believed, and a great deal more of 



CH. I. A NEW REIGN OPENS. II 

practical strength than either friends or foes gave him credit for. 
He became, not indeed an orator, but a very keen debater, who 
was especially effective in a cold irritating sarcasm which 
penetrated the weakness of an opponent's argument like some 
dissolving acid. The thin bright stream of argument worked its 
w T ay slowly out and contrived to wear a path for itself through 
obstacles which at first the looker-on might have felt assured 
it never could penetrate. 

Our English system of government by party makes the 
history of Parliament seem like that of a succession of great 
political duels. Two men stand constantly confronted during 
a series of years, one of whom is at the head of the Govern- 
ment, while the other is at the head of the Opposition. They 
change places with each victory. The conqueror goes hito 
office ; the conquered into opposition. It has often happened 
that the two leading opponents are men of intellectual and 
oratorical powers so fairly balanced that their followers may 
well dispute among themselves as to the superiority of their 
respective chiefs, and that the public in general may become 
divided into two schools not merely political but even critical, 
according to their partiality for one or the other. For many 
years Lord John Eussell and Sir Eobert Peel stood thus op- 
posed. Peel had by far the more original mind, and Lord John 
Eussell never obtained so great an influence over the House 
of Commons as that which his rival long enjoyed. Lord John 
Eussell was a born reformer. He had sat at the feet of Fox. 
He was cradled in the principles of Liberalism. He held 
faithfully to his creed ; he was one of its boldest and keenest 
champions. He had great advantages over Peel, in the mere 
fact that he had begun his education in a more enlightened 
school. But he wanted passion quite as much as Peel did, and 
remained still farther than Peel below the level of the genuine 
orator. 

After the chiefs of Ministry and of Opposition, the most 
conspicuous figure in the House of Commons was the colossal 
form of O'Connell, the great Irish agitator, of whom we shall 
hear a good deal more. Among the foremost orators of the 
House at that time was O'Connell's impassioned lieutenant, 
"Bichard Lalor Sheil. 

A reign which saw in its earliest years the application of 
the electric current to the task of transmitting messages, the 
first successful attempts to make use of steam for the business 
of Transatlantic navigation, the general development of tha 



12 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. I. 

railway system all over these countries, and the introduction 
of the penny post, must be considered to have obtained for 
itself, had it secured no other memorials, an abiding place in 
history. The history of the past forty or fifty years is almost 
absolutely distinct from that of any preceding period. In all 
that part of our social life which is affected by industrial and 
mechanical appliances we see a complete revolution. A man 
of the present day suddenly thrust back fifty years in life, 
would find himself almost as awkwardly unsuited to the ways 
of that time as if he were sent back to the age when the 
Romans occupied Britain. He would find himself harassed 
at every step he took. He could do hardly anything as he does 
it to-day. Sir Eobert Peel travelled from Borne to London 
to assume office as Prime Minister, exactly as Constantino 
travelled from York to Eome to become Emperor. Each 
traveller had all that sails and horses could do for him, and 
no more. A few years later Peel might have reached London 
from Eome in some forty- eight hours. 

It is a somewhat curious coincidence, that in the year when 
Professor Wheatstone and Mr. Cooke took out their first patent 
* for improvements in giving signals and sounding alarms in 
distant places by means of electric currents transmitted 
through metallic circuit,' Professor Morse, the American 
electrician, applied to Congress for aid in the construction and 
carrying on of a small electric telegraph to convey messages 
a short distance, and made the application without success. 
In the following year he came to this country to obtain a 
patent for his invention ; but he was refused. He had come 
too late. Our own countrymen were beforehand with him. 
Very soon after we find experiments made with the electric 
telegraph between Euston Square and Camden Town. The 
London and Birmingham Eailway was opened through its 
whole length in 1838. The Liverpool and Preston line was 
opened in the same year. The Liverpool and Birmingham 
had been opened in the year before ; the London and Croydon 
was opened the year after. The Act for the transmission of 
the mails by railways was passed in 1838. In the same year 
it was noted as an unparalleled, and to many an almost incre- 
dible, triumph of human energy and science over time and space, 
that a locomotive had been able to travel at a speed of thirty- 
seven miles an hour. 

Steam communication was successfully established between 
England and the United States, The Sirius, the Great Western, 



ch. I. A NEW REIGN OPENS. t3 

and the Royal William accomplished voyages between New 
York and this country in the early part of 1838. The Great 
Western crossed the ocean from Bristol to New York in fifteen 
days. She was followed by the Sirius, which left Cork for 
New York, and made the passage in seventeen days. The 
controversy as to the possibility of such voyages had no 
reference to the actual safety of such an experiment. During 
seven years the mails for the Mediterranean had been de- 
spatched by means of steamers. Neither the Sirius nor the 
Great Western was the first vessel to cross the Atlantic by 
means of steam propulsion. Nearly twenty years before, a 
vessel called the Savannah, built at New York, crossed the 
ocean to Liverpool, and a voyage had been made round the 
Cape of Good Hope more lately still by a steamship. These 
expeditions, however, had really little or nothing to do with 
the problem which was solved by the voyages of the Sirius and 
the Great Western. In the former instances the vessel made 
as much use of her steam propulsion as she could, but she had 
to rely a good deal on her capacity as a sailer. This was quite 
a different thing from the enterprise of the Sirius and the Great 
Western, which was to cross the ocean by steam propulsion 
only. It is evident that so long as the steam power was to be 
used only as an auxiliary, it would be impossible to reckon on 
speed and certainty of arrival. The doubt was whether a 
steamer could carry, with her cargo and passengers, fuel enough 
to serve for the whole of her voyage across the Atlantic. The 
expeditions of the Sirius and the Great Western settled the 
whole question. Two years after the Great Western went out 
from Bristol to New York the Cunard line of steamers was esta- 
blished. The steam communication between Liverpool and 
New York became thenceforth as regular and as unvarying a 
part of the business of commerce as the journeys of the trains 
on the Great Western Eailway between London and Bristol. 

Up to this time the rates of postage were very high, and 
varied both as to distance and as to the weight and even the size 
or the shape of a letter. The average postage on every charge- 
able letter throughout the United Kingdom was sixpence 
farthing. A letter from London to Brighton cost eightpence ; 
to Aberdeen one shilling and threepence halfpenny ; to Belfast 
one shilling and fourpence. Nor was this all ; for if the letter 
were written on more than one sheet of paper, it came under 
the operation of a higher scale of charge. Members of Parlia- 
ment and members of the Government had the privilege ot 



14 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH, l, 

franking letters. The franking privilege eonsisted in the right 
of the privileged person to send his own or any other person's 
letters through the post-free of charge by merely writing hia 
name on the outside. This meant, in plain words, that the 
letters of the class who could best afford to pay for them went 
free of charge, and that those who could least afford to pay 
had to pay double — the expense, that is to say, of carrying 
their own letters and the letters of the privileged and exempt. 

Mr. (afterwards Sir Eowland) Hill is the man to whom 
this country, and indeed all civilisation, owes the adoption of 
the cheap and uniform system. His plan has been adopted 
by every State which professes to have a postal system at all. 
Mr. Hill belonged to a remarkable family. His father, Thomas 
"Wright Hill, was a teacher, a man of advanced and practical 
views in popular education, a devoted lover of science, an advo- 
cate of civil and religious liberty, and a sort of celebrity in the 
Birmingham of his day. He had five sons, every one of whom 
made himself more or less conspicuous as a practical reformer 
in one path or another. The eldest of the sons was Matthew 
Davenport Hill, the philanthropic Eecorder of Birmmgham, 
who did so much for prison reform and for the reclamation of 
juvenile offenders. The third son was Eowland Hill, the 
author of the cheap postal system. Eowland Hill when a 
little weakly child began to show some such precocious love 
for arithmetical calculations as Pascal showed for mathematics. 
His favourite amusement as a child was to lie on the hearthrug 
and count up figures by the hour together. As he grew up 
he became teacher of mathematics in his father's school. 
Afterwards he was appointed secretary to the South Australian 
Commission, and rendered much valuable service in the orga- 
nisation of the colony of South Australia. A picturesque and 
touching little illustration of the veritable hardships of the 
existing system seems to have quickened his interest in Postal 
reform. Miss Martineau thus tells the story : — 

* Coleridge, when a young man, was walking through the 
Lake district, when he one day saw the postman deliver a 
letter to a woman at a cottage door. The woman turned it 
over and examined it, and then returned it, saying she could 
not pay the postage, which was a shilling. Hearing that the 
letter was from her brother, Coleridge paid the postage hi spite 
of the manifest unwillingness of the woman. As soon as the 
postman was out of sight she showed Coleridge how his money 
had been wasted, as far as she was concerned. The sheet was 



CH. I. Jt NEW REIGN OPENS, 15 

blank. There was an agreement between her brother and 
herself that as long as all went well with him he should send 
a blank sheet in this way once a quarter ; and she thus had 
tidings of him without expense of postage. Most persona 
would have remembered this incident as a curious story to tell ; 
but there was one mind which wakened up at once to a 
sense of the significance of the fact. It struck Mr. Kowland 
Hill that there must be something wrong in a system which 
drove a brother and sister to cheating, in order to gratify their 
desire to hear of one another's welfare.' 

Mr. Hill gradually worked out for himself a comprehensive 
(scheme of reform. He put it before the world early in 1837. 
The root of Mr. Hill's system lay in the fact, made evident 
by him beyond dispute, that the actual cost of the con- 
veyance of letters through the post was very trifling, and 
was but little increased by the distance over which they had 
to be carried. His proposal was therefore that the rates of 
postage should be diminished to a minimum ; that at the 
same time the speed of conveyance should be increased, and 
that there should be much greater frequency of despatch. 
He recommended the uniform charge of one penny the half- 
ounce, without reference to the distance within the limits of 
the United Kingdom which the letter had to be carried. 

The Post Office authorities were at first uncompromising 
in their opposition to the scheme. They were convinced 
that it must involve an unbearable loss of revenue. But 
the Government took up the scheme with some spirit and 
liberality. Petitions from all the commercial communities 
were pouring in to support the plan, and to ask that at 
least it should have a fair trial. The Government at length 
determined in 1839 to bring in a bill which should provide 
for the almost immediate introduction of Mr. Hill's scheme, 
and for the abolition of the franking system except in the 
case of official letters actually sent on business directly belong- 
ing to her Majesty's service. The bill declared, as an intro- 
ductory step, that the charge for postage should be at the rate 
of fourpence for each letter under half an ounce in weight, 
irrespective of distance, within the limits of the United King- 
dom. This, however, was to be only a beginning ; for on 
January 10, 1840, the postage was fixed at the miiform rate of 
one penny per letter of not more than half an ounce in weight. 
Some idea of the effect it has produced upon the postal corre- 
spondence of the country may be gathered from the fact that 



16 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. II. 

in 1839, the last year of the heavy postage, the number of 
letters delivered in Great Britain and Ireland was eighty-two 
millions, which included some five millions and a half of 
franked letters returning nothing to the revenue of the country ; 
whereas, in 1875, more than a thousand millions of letters 
were delivered in the United Kingdom. The population 
during the same time had not nearly doubled itself. 



CHAPTER II. 

SOME TEOUBLES TO THE NEW EEIGN. 

The new Queen's reign opened amid many grim and unpro- 
mising conditions of our social affairs. The winter of 1837-8 
was one oi unusual severity and distress. There would have 
been much discontent and grumbling in any case among the 
class, but the complaints were aggravated by a common belief 
that the young Queen was wholly under the influence of a 
frivolous and selfish minister, who occupied her with amuse- 
ments while the poor were starving. It does not appear that 
there was at any time the slightest justification for such a 
belief ; but it prevailed among the working classes and the 
poor very generally, and added to the sufferings of genuine 
want the bitterness of imaginary wrong. 

Only a few weeks after the coronation of the Queen a 
great Radical meeting was held in Birmingham. A manifesto 
was adopted there which afterwards came to be known as the 
Chartist petition. With that moment Chartism began to be 
one of the most disturbing influences of the political life of the 
country. For ten years it agitated England. It might have been 
a very serious danger if the State had been involved in any ex- 
ternal difficulties. It was backed by much genuine enthusiasm, 
passion and intelligence. It appealed strongly and naturally to 
whatever there was of discontent among the working classes. 
Its fierce and fitful flame went out at last under the influence of 
the clear, strong and steady light of political reform and educa- 
tion. The one great lesson it teaches is ? that political agitation 
lives and is formidable only by virtue of what is reasonable in 
its demands. Thousands of ignorant and miserable men all over 
the country joined the Chartist agitation who cared nothing 
about the substantial value of its political claims. They were 
poor, they were overworked, they were badly paid, their lives 



ch. ii. SOME TROUBLES TO THE NEW REIGN f) 

were altogether wretched. They got into their heads some wild 
idea that the People's Charter would give them better food and 
wages and lighter work if it were obtained, and that for that 
very reason the aristocrats and the officials would not grant it. 

The Eeform Bill of 1832 had done great things for the 
constitutional system of England. It abolished fifty-six nomi- 
nation or rotten boroughs, and took away half the representa- 
tion from thirty others ; it disposed of the seats thus obtained by 
giving sixty-five additional representatives to the counties, and 
conferred the right of returning members on Manchester, 
Leeds, Birmingham, and some thirty-nine large and prosper- 
ous towns which had previously had no representation. The 
bill hitroduced a 10Z. household qualification for boroughs, and 
extended the county franchise to leaseholders and copyholders. 
But it left the working classes almost altogether out of the 
franchise. It broke down the monopoly which the aristocracy 
and landed classes had enjoyed, and admitted the middle 
classes to a share of the law-making power, but the working 
class, in the opinion of many of their ablest and most 
influential representatives, were not merely left out, but 
shouldered out. This was all the more exasperating, because 
the excitement and agitation by the strength of which the 
Reform Bill was carried in the teeth of so much resistance 
were kept up by the working men. Bightly or wrongly 
they believed that their strength had been kept in reserve 
to secure the carrying of the Beform Bill, and that when it 
was carried they were immediately thrown over by those 
whom they had thus helped to pass it. Therefore at the time 
when the young Sovereign ascended the throne, the working 
classes in all the large towns were in a state of profound dis- 
appointment and discontent, almost indeed of disaffection. 
Chartism was beginning to succeed to the Beform agitation. 

Chartism may be said to have sprung definitively into ex- 
istence in consequence of the formal declarations of the leaders 
of the Liberal party in Parliament that they did not intend to 
push Beform any farther. At the opening of the first Parlia- 
ment of Queen Victoria's reign the question was brought to 
a test. A Radical member of the House of Commons moved as 
an amendment to the address a resolution declaring in favour of 
the ballot and of shorter duration of Parliaments. Only twenty 
members voted for it ; and Lord John Russell declared that to 
push Reform any farther then would be a breach of faith towards 
those who helped him to carry it. A great many outside Parlia- 



iS A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. J2. 

ment not unnaturally regarded the refusal to go any farther as 
a breach of faith towards them on the part of the Liberal leaders. 
A conference was held almost immediately between a few 
of the Liberal members of Parliament who professed Eadical 
opinions and some of the leaders of the working men. At 
this conference the programme, or what was afterwards known 
as ' the Charter,' was agreed upon and drawn up. The name 
of Charter was given by Mr. O'Connell. 

Quietly studied now, the People's Charter does not seem a 
very formidable document. Its ' points,' as they were called, 
were six. Manhood Suffrage came first. The second was 
Annual Parliaments. Vote by Ballot was the third. Abolition 
of the Property Qualification (then and for many years after 
required for the election of a member to Parliament) was the 
fourth. The Payment of Members was the fifth ; and the 
Division of the Country into Equal Electoral Districts, the 
sixth of the famous points. Three of the points — half, that 
is to say, of the whole number — have already been made part 
of our constitutional system. The existing franchise may be 
virtually regarded as manhood suffrage. We have for years 
been voting by means of a written paper dropped in a ballot- 
box. The property qualification for members of Parliament 
could hardly be said to have been abolished. Such a word 
seems far too grand and dignified to describe the fate that 
befell it. We should rather say that it was extinguished by 
its own absurdity and viciousness. The proposal to divide 
the country into equal electoral districts is one which can 
hardly yet be regarded as having come to any test. But it is 
almost certain that sooner or later some alteration of our pre- 
sent system in that direction will be adopted. Of the two 
other points of the Charter, the payment of members may be 
regarded as decidedly objectionable ; and that for yearly Par- 
liaments as embodying a proposition which would make public 
life an almost insufferable nuisance to those actively concerned 
in it. 

The Chartists might be roughly divided into three classes 
— the political Chartists, the social Chartists, and the Chartists 
of vague discontent who joined the movement because they 
were wretched and felt angry. The first were the regular 
political agitators who wanted a wider popular representation ; 
the second were chiefly led to the movement by their hatred 
of the ' bread -tax.' These two classes were perfectly clear as 
to what they wanted : some of their demands were just and 



CH. II. SOME TROUBLES TO THE NEW REIGN. 29 

reasonable ; none of them were without the sphere of rational 
and peaceful controversy. The disciples of mere discontent 
naturally swerved alternately to the side of those leaders or 
sections who talked loudest and fiercest against the lawmakers 
and the constituted authorities. Chartism soon split itself 
into two general divisions — the moral force and the physical 
force Chartism. A whole literature of Chartist newspapers 
sprang up to advocate the cause. The Northern Star was the 
most popular and influential of them ; but every great town 
had its Chartist press. Meetings were held at which sometimes 
the most violent language was employed. It began to be the 
practice to hold torchlight meetings at night, and many men 
went armed to these, and open clamour was made by the wilder 
of the Chartists for an appeal to arms. A formidable riot took 
place in Birmingham, where the authorities endeavoured to put 
down a Chartist meeting. The Government began to prosecute 
some of the orators and leaders of the Charter movement ; 
and some of these were convicted, imprisoned, and treated 
with great severity. 

Wide and almost universal discontent among the working 
classes hi town and country still helped to swell the Chartist 
ranks. The weavers and stockingers in some of the manufac- 
turing towns were miserably poor. Wages were low every- 
where. In the agricultural districts the complaints against 
the operation of the new Poor Law were vehement and pas- 
sionate ; and although they were unjust in principle and sus- 
tained by monstrous exaggerations of statement, they were 
not the less potent as recruiting agents for Chartism. There 
was a profound distrust of the middle class and their leaders. 
It is clear that at that time the Chartists, who represented 
the bulk of the artisan class in most of the large towns, did 
in their very hearts believe that England was ruled for the 
benefit of aristocrats and millionaires who were absolutely 
indifferent to the sufferings of the poor. It is equally clear 
that most of what are called the ruling class did really believe 
the English working men who joined the Chartist movement 
to be a race of fierce, unmanageable and selfish communists 
who, if they were allowed their own way for a moment, would 
prove themselves determined to overthrow throne, altar, and 
all established securities of society. An ignorant panic pre- 
vailed on both sides. 

The first foreign disturbance to the quiet and good pro- 
mise of the new reign came from Canada. The condition oi 



20 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. H. 

Canada was very peculiar. By an Act called the Constitution 
of 1791, Canada was divided into two provinces, the Upper 
and the Lower. Each province had a separate system of 
government, consisting of a governor, an executive council 
appointed by the Crown, and supposed in some way to re- 
semble the Privy Council of this country ; a legislative 
council, the members of which were appointed by the Crown 
for life ; and a Eepresentative Assembly, the members of 
which were elected for four years. At the same time the 
clergy reserves were established by Parliament. One-seventh 
of the waste lands of the colony was set aside for the mainten- 
ance of the Protestant clergy, a fruitful source of disturbance 
and ill-feeling. Lower or Eastern Canada was inhabited for 
the most part by men of French descent, who still kept up 
in the midst of an active and moving civilisation most of 
the principles and usages which belonged to mediaeval France. 
Lower Canada would have dozed away in its sleepy pictu- 
resqueness, held fast to its ancient ways, and allowed a 
bustling giddy world, all alive with commerce and ambition, 
and desire for novelty and the terribly disturbing thing which 
unresting people called progress, to rush on its wild path un- 
heeded. But in the large towns there were active traders 
from England and other countries, who were by no means 
content to put up with old-world ways, and to let the magnifi- 
cent resources of the place run to waste. Upper Canada, on 
the other hand, was all new as to its population, and was full 
of the modern desire for commercial activity. Upper Canada 
was peopled almost exclusively by inhabitants from great 
Britain. 

It is easy to see on the very face of things some of the 
difficulties which must arise in the development of such a 
system. The French of Lower Canada would regard with 
almost morbid jealousy any legislation which appeared likely 
to interfere with their ancient ways and to give any advantage 
or favour to the populations of British descent. The latter 
would see injustice or feebleness in every measure which did 
not assist them in developing their more energetic ideas. 

It was in Lower Canada that the greatest difficulties arose. 
A constant antagonism grew up between the majority of the 
Eepresentative Assembly, who were elected by the population 
of the province. At last the Eepresentative Assembly refused 
to vote any further supplies or to carry on any further busi- 
ness, Thev formulated their grievances against the Home 



CH. ii. SOME TROUBLES TO THE NEW RE I G ft. it 

Government. Their complaints were of arbitrary conduct on 
the part of the governors; intolerable composition of the 
legislative council, which they insisted ought to be elective ; 
illegal appropriation of the public money ; and violent pro- 
rogation of the provincial Parliament. 

One of the leading men in the movement was Mr. Louis 
Joseph Papineau. This man had risen to high position by 
his talents, his energy, and his undoubtedly honourable cha- 
racter. He had represented Montreal in the Representative 
Assembly of Lower Canada, and he afterwards became Speaker 
of the House. He made himself leader of the movement to 
protest against the policy of the governors, and that of the 
Government at home by whom they were sustained. He 
held a series of meetings, at some of which undoubtedly 
rather strong language was used, and too frequent and signi- 
ficant appeals were made to the example held out to the 
population of Lower Canada by the successful revolt of the 
United States. Mr. Papineau also planned the calling together 
of a great convention to discuss and proclaim the grievances 
of the colonies. Lord Gosford, the governor, began by dis- 
missing several militia officers who had taken part in some of 
these demonstrations ; Mr. Papineau himself was an officer of 
this force. Then the governor issued warrants for the appre- 
hension of many members of the popular Assembly on the 
charge of high treason. Some of these at once left the 
country ; others against whom warrants were issued were 
arrested, and a sudden resistance was made by their friends 
and supporters. Then, in the manner familiar to all who 
have read anything of the history of revolutionary move- 
ments, the resistance to a capture of prisoners suddenly 
transformed itself into open rebellion. 

The rebellion was not in a military sense a very great 
thing. At its first outbreak the military authorities were for 
a moment surprised, and the rebels obtained one or two 
trifling advantages. But the commander-in-chief at once 
showed energy adequate to the occasion, and used, as it was 
his duty to do, a strong hand in putting the movement down. 
The rebels fought with something like desperation in one or 
two instances, and there was, it must be said, a good deal of 
blood shed. The disturbance, however, after a while extended 
to the upper province. Upper Canada too had its complaints 
against its governors and the Home Government. 

The news of the outbreaks in Canada created a natural 



22 A SHORT HISTORY OF OVR OWN TIMES, CM. It. 

excitement in this country. There was a very strong feeling 
of sympathy among many classes here— not, indeed, with the 
rebellion, but with the colony which complained of what 
seemed to be genuine and serious grievances. Public meet- 
ings were held at which resolutions were passed ascribing the 
disturbances in the first place to the refusal by the Govern- 
ment of any redress sought for by the colonists. Lord John 
Russell on the part of the Government introduced a bill to 
deal with the rebellious province. The bill proposed in brief 
to suspend for a time the constitution of Lower Canada, and 
to send out from this country a governor-general and high 
commissioner, with full powers to deal with the rebellion, and 
to remodel the constitution of both provinces. There was an 
almost universal admission that the Government had found 
the right man when Lord John Eussell mentioned the name 
of Lord Durham. 

Lord Durham was a man of remarkable character. He 
belonged to one of the oldest families in England. The 
Lambtons had lived on their estate in the north, in uninter- 
rupted succession, since the Conquest. The male succession, 
it is stated, never was interrupted since the twelfth century. 
They were not, however, a family of aristocrats. Their wealth 
was derived chiefly from coal-mines, and grew up in later 
days ; the property at first, and for a long time, was of incon- 
siderable value. Lord Durham was born at Lambton Castle 
in April 1792. Before he was quite twenty years of age, he 
made a romantic marriage at Gretna Green with a lady who 
died three years after. About a year after the death of his 
first wife, he married the eldest daughter of Lord Grey. He 
was then only twenty-four years of age. He had before this 
been returned to Parliament for the county of Durham, and 
he soon distinguished himself as a very advanced and energetio 
reformer. While in the Commons he seldom addressed the 
House, but when he did speak, it was in support of some 
measure of reform, or against what he conceived to be anti- 
quated and illiberal legislation. He brought out a plan of 
his own for Parliamentary reform in 1821. In 1828 he was 
raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Durham. When 
the Ministry of Lord Grey was formed, in November 1830, 
Lord Durham became Lord Privy Seal. He is said to have 
had an almost complete control over Lord Grey. He had an 
impassioned and energetic nature, which sometimes drove 
him into outbreaks of feeling which most of his colleagues 



CH. II. SOME TROUBLES TO THE NEW REIGN. 23 

dreaded. He was thorough in his reforming purposes, and 
would have rushed at radical changes with scanty considera- 
tion for the time or for the temper of his opponents. He had 
very little reverence indeed for the majesty of custom. What- 
ever he wished he strongly wished. He had no idea of reti- 
cence, and cared not much for the decorum of office. He 
was one of the men who, even when they are thoroughly in the 
right, have often the unhappy art of seeming to put themselves 
completely in the wrong. None of his opponents, however, 
denied his great ability. He was never deterred by conven- 
tional beliefs and habits from looking boldly into the very 
heart of a great political difficulty. He was never afraid to 
propose what in times later than his have been called heroic 
remedies. There was a general impression, perhaps even 
among those who liked him least, that he was a sort of 
1 unemployed Cassar,' a man who only required a field large 
enough to develop great qualities in the ruling of men. The 
difficulties in Canada seemed to have come as if expressly to 
give him an opportunity of proving himself all that his friends 
declared him to be, or of justifying for ever the distrust of his 
enemies. He went out to Canada with the assurance of 
everyone that his expedition would either make or mar a 
career, if not a country. Lord Durham found out a new 
alternative. He made a country and he marred a career - 
The mission of Lord Durham saved Canada. It ruined Lord 
Durham. 

Lord Durham arrived in Quebec at the end of May, 1838. 
He at once issued a proclamation, in style like that of a 
dictator. It was not in any way unworthy of the occasion, 
which especially called for the intervention of a brave and 
enlightened dictatorship. He declared that he would un- 
sparingly punish any who violated the laws, but he frankly 
invited the co-operation of the colonies to form a new system 
of government really suited to their wants and to the altering 
conditions of civilisation. Unfortunately he had hardly entered 
on his work of dictatorship when he found that he was no longer 
a dictator. In the passing of the Canada Bill through Parlia- 
ment the powers which he understood were to be conferred 
upon him had been considerably reduced. Lord Durham 
went to work, however, as if he were still invested with 
absolute authority over all the laws and conditions of the 
colony. A very Caesar laying down the lines for the future 
government of a province could hardly have been more boldly 



U A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. a 

arbitrary. Let it be said also that Lord Durham's arbitrariness 
was for the most part healthy in effect and just in spirit. But 
it gave an immense opportunity of attack on himself and 
on the Government to the enemies of both at home. Lord 
Durham had hardly begun his work of reconstruction when his 
recall was clamoured for by vehement voices in Parliament. 

Lord Durham did not wait for the formal recall. He 
returned to England a disgraced man. Yet even then there 
was public spirit enough among the English people to refuse 
to ratify any sentence of disgrace upon him. When he landed 
at Plymouth, he was received with acclamations by the popu- 
lation, although the Government had prevented any of the 
official honour usually shown to returning governors from 
being offered to him. 

Lord Durham's report was acknowledged by enemies as 
well as by the most impartial critics to be a masterly document. 
It laid the foundation of the political success and social pro- 
sperity not only of Canada but of all the other important colonies. 
After having explained in the most exhaustive manner the 
causes of discontent and backwardness in Canada, it went on 
to recommend that the government of the colony should be 
put as much as possible into the hands of the colonists them- 
selves, that they themselves should execute as well as make 
the laws, the limit of the Imperial Government's interference 
being in such matters as affect the relations of the colony with 
the mother country, such as the constitution and form of 
government, the regulation of foreign relations and trade, and 
the disposal of the public lands. Lord Durham proposed to 
establish a thoroughly good system of municipal institutions ; 
to secure the independence of the judges ; to make all provin- 
cial officers, except the governor and his secretary, responsible 
to the Colonial Legislature ; and to repeal all former legislation 
with respect to the reserves of land for the clergy. Finally, 
he proposed that the provinces of Canada should be reunited 
politically and should become one legislature, containing the 
representatives of both races and of all districts. It is signifi- 
cant that the report also recommended that in any Act to be 
introduced for this purpose, a provision should be made by 
which all or any of the other North American colonies 
should on the application of their legislatures and with the 
consent of Canada be admitted into the Canadian Union. In 
brief, Lord Durham proposed to make the Canadas self-govern- 
ing as regards their internal affairs, and the germ of a federal 
union. 



ch. ii. SOME TROUBLES TO THE NEW REIGN, 25 

It is not necessary to describe in detail the steps by which 
the Government gradually introduced the recommendations of 
Lord Durham to Parliament and carried them to success. In 
1840, however, the Act was passed which reunited Upper 
and Lower Canada on the basis proposed by Lord Durham. 
Lord Durham did not live to see the success of the policy 
he had recommended. Within a few days after the passing of 
the Canada Government Bill he died at Cowes, in the Isle of 
Wight, on July 28, 1840. He was then little more than forty- 
eight years of age. He had for some time been in failing 
health, and it cannot be doubted that the mortification attend- 
ing his Canadian mission had worn away his strength. His 
proud and sensitive spirit could ill bear the contradictions and 
humiliations that had been forced upon him. He wanted to 
the success of his political career that proud patience which 
the gods are said to love, and by virtue of which great men 
live down misappreciation, and hold out until they see them- 
selves justified and hear the reproaches turn into cheers. But 
if Lord Durham's personal career was in any way a failure, his 
policy for the Canadas was a splendid success. It established 
the principles of colonial government. There were defects in 
the construction of Lord Durham's scheme, but the success of 
his policy lay in the broad principles it laid down, and to which 
other colonial systems as well as that of the Dominion of Canada 
owe their strength and security to-day. One may say, with 
little help from the merely fanciful, that the rejoicings of 
emancipated colonies might have been in his dying ears as he 
sank into his early grave. 

The Opium dispute with China was going on when the 
Queen came to the throne. The Opium War broke out soon 
after. Keduced to plain words, the principle for which we 
fought in the China War was the right of Great Britain to force 
a peculiar trade upon a foreign people in spite of the protest- 
ations of the Government and all such public opinion as there 
was of the nation. 

The whole principle of Chinese civilisation, at the time 
when the Opium War broke out, was based on conditions which 
to any modern nation must seem erroneous and unreasonable. 
The Chinese Governments and people desired to have no political 
relations or dealings whatever with any other State. They were 
not so obstinately set against private and commercial dealings ; 
but they would have no political intercourse with foreigners, 
and they would not even recognise the existence of foreign 

2 



26 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. n. 

peoples as States. They were perfectly satisfied with themselves 
and their own systems. The one thing which China asked of 
European civilisation and the movement called Modern Progress 
was to be let alone. The Chinese would much rather have 
lived without ever seeing the face of a foreigner. But they had 
put up with the private intrusion of foreigners and trade, and 
had had dealings with American traders and with the East 
India Company. The charter and the exclusive rights of the 
East India Company expired in April 1834 ; the charter was 
renewed under different conditions, and the trade with China 
was thrown open. One of the great branches of the East India 
Company's business with China was the opium trade. When 
the trading privileges ceased this traffic was taken up briskly by 
private merchants, who bought of the Company the opium 
which they grew in India and sold it to the Chinese. The 
Chinese Governments, and all teachers, moralists, and persons 
of education in China, had long desired to get rid of or put down 
this trade in opium. They considered it highly detrimental to 
the morals, the health, and the prosperity of the people. All 
traffic in opium was strictly forbidden by the Governments and 
laws of China. Yet our English traders carried on a brisk and 
profitable trade in the forbidden article. Nor was this merely an 
ordinary smuggling, or a business akin to that of the blockade 
running during the American civil war. The arrangements 
with the Chinese Government allowed the existence of all esta- 
blishments and machinery for carrying on a general trade at 
Canton and Macao ; and under cover of these arrangements the 
opium traders set up their regular head-quarters in these towns. 

The English Government appointed superintendents to 
manage our commercial dealings with China. Misunderstand- 
ings occurred at every new step of negotiation. These mis- 
understandings were natural. Our people knew hardly any- 
thing about the Chinese. The limitation of our means of 
communication with them made this ignorance inevitable, but 
certainly did not excuse our acting as if we were in possession 
of the fullest and most accurate information. 

The Chinese believed from the first that the superintendents 
were there merely to protect the opium trade, and to force on 
China political relations with the West. Practically this was 
the effect of their presence. The superintendents took no steps 
to aid the Chinese authorities in stopping the hated trade. 
The British traders naturally enough thought that the British 
Government were determined to protect them in carrying it on. 



Cll. I!. SOME TROUBLES TO THE NEW REIGN. ij 

At length tlie English Government announced that * her 
Majesty's Government could not interfere for the purpose of 
enabling British subjects to violate the laws of the country with 
which they trade ; ' and that ' any loss therefore which such 
persons may suffer in consequence of the more effectual exe- 
cution of the Chinese laws on this subject must be borne by the 
parties who have brought that loss on themselves by their own 
acts.' This very wise and proper resolve came, however, too 
late. The British traders had been allowed to go on for a long 
time under the full conviction that the protection of the English 
Government was behind them and wholly at their service. 

When the Chinese authorities actually proceeded to insist 
on the forfeiture of an immense quantity of opium in the hand 
of British traders, and took other harsh, but certainly not un- 
natural measures to extinguish the traffic, Captain Elliott, the 
chief superintendent, sent to the Governor of India a request 
for as many ships of war as could be spared for the protection 
of the life and property of Englishmen in China. Before long 
British ships arrived ; and the two countries were at war. 

It was easy work enough so far as England was concerned. 
It was on our side nothing but a succession of cheap victories. 
The Chinese fought very bravely in a great many instances ; 
and they showed still more often a Spartan-like resolve not to 
survive defeat. When one of the Chinese cities was taken by 
Sir Hugh Gough, the Tartar general went into his house as 
soon as he saw that all was lost, made his servants set fire to 
the building, and calmly sat in his chair until he was burned 
to death. We quickly captured the island of Chusan, on the 
east coast of China ; a part of our squadron went up the Peiho 
river to threaten the capital ; negotiations were opened, and 
the preliminaries of a treaty were made out, to which, however, 
neither the English Government nor the Chinese would agree, 
and the war was reopened. Chusan was again taken by us ; 
Ningpo, a large city a few miles in on the mainland, fell into 
our hands ; Amoy, farther south, was captured ; our troops 
were before Nankin, when the Chinese Government at last saw 
how futile was the idea of resisting our arms. They made 
peace at last on any terms we chose to ask. We asked in the 
first instance the cession in perpetuity to us of the island of 
Hong-Kong. Of course we got it. Then we asked that five 
ports, Canton, Amoy, Foo-Chow-Foo, Ningpo, and Shanghai 
should be thrown open to British traders, and that consuls 
should be established there. Needless to say that this too waa 



28 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. It. 

conceded. Then it was agreed that the indemnity already men- 
tioned should be paid by the Chinese Government — some four 
millions and a half sterling, in addition to one million and a 
quarter as compensation for the destroyed opium. The Chinese 
war then was over for the time. But as the children say that 
snow brings more snow, so did that war with China bring other 
Wars to follow it. 

The Melbourne Ministry kept going from bad to worse. 
There was a great stirring in the country all around them, 
which made their feebleness the more conspicuous. Indeed 
the history of that time seems full of Eeform projects. The 
Parliamentary annals contain the names of various measures 
of social and political improvement which might hi them- 
selves, it would seem, bear witness to the most unsleeping 
activity on the part of any Ministry. The appointment of the 
Committee of Council to deal with the elementary education 
of the poor ; measures for general registration ; for the re- 
duction of the stamp duty on newspapers, and of the duty 
on paper ; for the improvement of the gaol system ; for the 
spread of vaccination ; for the regulation of the labour of chil- 
dren ; for the prohibition of the employment of any child or 
young person under twenty-one in the cleaning of chimneys 
by climbing ; for the suppression of the punishment of the 
pillory ; efforts to relieve the Jews from civil disabilities — these 
are but a few of the many projects of social and political 
reform that occupied the attention of that busy period which 
somehow appears nevertheless to have been so sleepy and do- 
nothing. How does it come about that we can regard the Min- 
istry in whose time all these things were done or attempted as 
exhausted and worthless ? 

One answer is plain. The reforming energy was in the 
time, and not in the Ministry. There was a just and general 
conviction that if the Government were left to themselves they 
would do nothing. Whatever they undertook they seemed to 
undertake reluctantly, and as if only with the object of pre- 
venting other people from having anything to do with it. 
Naturally, therefore, they got little or no thanks for any good 
they might have done. When they brought hi a measure to 
abolish in various cases the punishment of death, they fell so 
far behind public opinion and the inclinations of the Com- 
mission that had for eight years been inquiring into the state 
of our criminal law, that their bill only passed by very narrow 
majorities, and impressed many ardent reformers as if it were 



CH. II, SOME TROUBLES TO THE NEW REIGN. 29 

.meant rather to withhold than to advance a genuine reform. 
In truth it was a period of enthusiasm and of growth, and the 
Ministry did not understand this. Lord Melbourne had appa- 
rently got into his mind the conviction that the only sensible 
thing the people of England could do was to keep up the Mel- 
bourne Ministry, and that being a sensible people they would 
naturally do this. He had grown into something like the con- 
dition of a pampered old hall porter, who, dozing in his chair, 
begins to look on it as an act of rudeness if any visitor to his 
master presumes to knock at the door and so disturb him from 
his comfortable rest. 

The operations which took place about this time in Syria 
had an important bearing on the relations between this country 
and France. Mohammed Ali, Pasha of Egypt, the most 
powerful of all the Sultan's feudatories, had made himself for 
a time master of Syria. By the aid of his adopted son, Ibra- 
him Pasha, he had defeated the armies of the Porte wherever 
he had encountered them. Mohammed's victories had for the 
time compelled the Porte to allow him to remain in power in 
Syria ; but in 1839 the Sultan again declared war against 
Mohammed Ali. Ibrahim Pasha again obtained an over- 
whelming victory over the Turkish army. The energetic 
Sultan Mahmoud died suddenly ; and immediately after his 
death the Capitan Pasha, or Lord High Admiral of the Otto- 
man fleet, went over to the Egyptians with all his vessels ; an 
act of almost unexampled treachery even in the history of the 
Ottoman Empire. It was evident that Turkey was not able 
to hold her own against the formidable Mohammed and his 
successful son ; and the policy of the Western Powers of 
Europe, and of England especially, had long been to maintain 
the Ottoman Empire as a necessary part of the common State 
system. The policy of Eussia was to keep up that empire 
as long as it suited her own purposes ; to take care that no 
other Power got anything out of Turkey ; and to prepare the 
way for such a partition of the spoils of Turkey as would 
satisfy Eussian interests. Eussia therefore was to be found 
now defending Turkey, and now assailing her. The course 
taken by Eussia was seemingly inconsistent ; but it was only 
inconsistent as the course of a sailing ship may be which now 
tacks to this side and now to that, but has a clear object in 
view and a port to reach all the while. England was then and 
for a long time after steadily bent on preserving the Turkish 
Empire, and in a great measure as a rampart against the 



30 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. n. 

schemes and ambitions imputed to Eussia herself. France 
was less firmly set on the maintenance of Turkey ; and France, 
moreover, had got into her mind that England had designs of 
her own on Egypt. Austria was disposed to go generally with 
England ; Prussia was little more than a nominal sharer in the 
alliance that was now patched up. It is evident that such an 
alliance could not be very harmonious or direct in its action. 
It was, however, effective enough to prove too strong for the 
Pasha of Egypt. A fleet made up of English, Austrian and 
Turkish vessels bombarded Acre ; an allied army drove the 
Egyptians from several of their strongholds. Ibrahim Pasha, 
with all his courage and genius, was not equal to the odds 
against which he now saw himself forced to contend. He had 
to succumb. Mohammed Ali was deprived of all his Asiatic 
possessions ; but was secured in his government of Egypt by a 
convention signed at London on July 15, 1840, by the repre- 
sentatives of Great Britain, Austria, Prussia and Eussia, on the 
one part, and of the Ottoman Porte on the other. The name of 
France was not found there. France had drawn back from the 
alliance, and for some time seemed as if she were likely to take 
arms against it. M. Thiers was then her Prime Minister : he 
was a man of quick fancy, restless and ambitious temperament. 
Thiers persuaded himself and the great majority of his country- 
men that England was bent upon drivhig Mohammed Ali out 
of Egypt as well as out of Syria, and that her object was to 
obtain possession of Egypt for herself. For some months it 
seemed as if war were inevitable between England and France. 
Fortunately, the French King, Louis Philippe and the eminent 
statesman, M. Guizot, were both strongly in favour of peace ; 
M. Thiers resigned ; M. Guizot became Minister for Foreign 
Affairs, and virtually head of the Government, and on July 13, 
1841, the Treaty of London was signed, which provided for the 
settlement of the affairs of Egypt on the basis of the arrange- 
ment already made, and which contained moreover a stipula- 
tion, by which the Sultan declared himself firmly resolved to 
maintain the ancient principle of his empire — that no foreign 
ship of war was to be admitted into the Dardanelles and the 
Bosphorus, with the exception of light vessels for which a 
firman was granted. 

Steadily meanwhile did the Ministry go from bad to worse. 
They were remarkably bad administrators ; their finances were 
wretchedly managed. The budget of the Chancellor ot the 
Exchequer, Mr. Baring, showed a deficiency of nearly two 



CH. n. SOME TROUBLES TO THE NEW REIGN, 31 

millions. This deficiency lie proposed to meet in part by 
alteration in the sugar duties ; but the House of Commons, 
after a long debate, rejected his proposals by a majority of 
thirty-six. It was then expected, of course, that ministers 
would resign ; but they were not yet willing to accept the 
consequences of defeat. People began to ask, ' Will nothing 
then turn them out of office ? Will they never have done with 
trying new tricks to keep in place ? ' 

Sir Eobert Peel took, in homely phrase, the bull by the 
horns. He proposed a direct vote of want of confidence — a 
resolution declaring that ministers did not possess the confi- 
dence of the House sufficiently to enable them to carry 
through the measures which they deemed of essential impor- 
tance to the public welfare, and that their continuance in office 
under such circumstances was at variance with the spirit of 
the Constitution. On June 4, 1841, the division was taken; 
and the vote of no-confidence was carried by a majority of one. 
Even the Whigs could not stand this. Parliament was dis- 
solved, and the result of the general election was that the 
Tories were found to have a majority even greater than they 
themselves had anticipated. The moment the new Parliament 
was assembled amendments to the address were carried in both 
Houses in a sense hostile to the Government. Lord Melbourne 
and his colleagues had to resign, and Sir Eobert Peel was en- 
trusted with the task of forming an administration. 

We have no more to do with Lord Melbourne in this history. 
He merely drops out of it. Between his expulsion from office 
and his death, which took place in 1848, he did little or nothing 
to call for the notice of anyone. It was said at one time that 
his closing years were lonesome and melancholy ; but this has 
lately been denied, and indeed it is not likely that one who had 
such a genial temper and so many friends could have been left to 
the dreariness of a not self-sufficing solitude and to the bitter- 
ness of neglect. He was a generous and kindly man ; his 
personal character, although often assailed, was free of any 
serious reproach ; he was a failure in office, not so much from 
want of ability, as because he was a politician without convic- 
tions. 

The Peel Ministry came into power with great hopes. It 
had Lord Lyndhurst for Lord Chancellor ; Sir James Graham 
for Home Secretary ; Lord Aberdeen at the Foreign Office ; 
Lord Stanley was Colonial Secretary. The most remarkable 
man not in the Cabinet, soon to be one of the foremost states* 



32 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. II. 

men in the country, was Mr. W. E. Gladstone. It is a fact 
of some significance in the history of the Peel administration, 
that the elections which brought the new Ministry into power 
brought Mr. Cobden for the first time into the House of 
Commons. 

While Lord Melbourne and his Whig colleagues, still in. 
office, were fribbling away their popularity on the pleasant as- 
sumption that nobody was particularly in earnest about any- 
thing, the Vice-Chancellor and heads of houses held a meeting 
at Oxford, and passed a censure on the celebrated ' No. 90 ' of 
' Tracts for the Times.' The author of the tract was Dr. John 
Henry Newman, and the principal ground for its censure by 
voices claiming authority was the principle it seemed to put 
forward — that a man might honestly subscribe all the articles 
and formularies of the English Church, while yet holding 
many of the doctrines of the Church of Eome, against which 
those articles were regarded as a necessary protest. The 
great movement which was thus brought into sudden question 
and publicity sprang from the desire to revive the authority 
of the Church ; to quicken her with a new vitality ; to give 
her once again that place as guide and inspirer of the national 
life which her ardent votaries believed to be hers by right, 
and to have been forfeited only by the carelessness of her 
authorities and their failure to fulfil the duties of her Heaven- 
assigned mission. 

No movement could have had a purer source. None could 
have had more disinterested and high-minded promoters. 
It was borne in upon some earnest unresting souls, like that 
of the sweet and saintly Keble, that the Church of England 
had higher duties and nobler claims than the business of 
preaching harmless sermons and the power of enriching 
bishops. Keble urged on some of the more vigorous and 
thoughtful minds around him by his influence and his ex- 
ample, that they should reclaim for the Church the place 
which ought to be hers, as the true successor of the Apostles. 
Among those who shared the spirit and purpose of Keble were 
Richard Hurrell Froude, the historian's elder brother, who 
gave rich promise of a splendid career, but who died while 
still in comparative youth ; Dr. Pusey, afterwards leader of 
the school of ecclesiasticism which bears his name ; and, most 
eminent of all, Dr. Newman. Newman had started the publi- 
cation of a series of treatises called ' Tracts for the Times,' to 
vindicate the real mission of the Church of England, and 



ch. ii. SOME TROUBLES TO THE NEW REIGN. 33 

wrote the most remarkable of them. This was the Tractanan 
movement, which had such various and memorable results. 
Newman had up to this time been distinguished as one of the 
most unsparing enemies of Eome. He had never had any 
maimer of association with Koman Catholics ; had in fact 
known singularly little of them. At this time the idea of 
leaving the Church never, Dr. Newman himself assures us, 
had crossed his imagination. 

The abilities of Dr. Newman were hardly surpassed by any 
contemporary in any department of thought. His position 
and influence in Oxford were almost unique. There was in 
his intellectual temperament a curious combination of the 
mystic and the logical. England in our time has hardly had 
a greater master of argument and of English prose than 
Newman. He is one of the keenest of dialecticians. His 
words dispel mists ; and whether they who listen agree or not, 
they cannot fail to understand. A penetrating poignant sati- 
rical humour is found in most of his writings ; an irony some- 
times piercing suddenly through it like a darting pahi. On 
the other hand, a generous vein of poetry and of pathos informs 
his style ; and there are many passages of his works in which 
he rises to the height of a genuine and noble eloquence. 

In all the arts that make a great preacher or orator, 
Newman was strikingly deficient. His manner was con- 
strained, ungraceful and even awkward ; his voiee was thin 
and weak. His bearing was not at first impressive in any 
way. A gaunt, emaciated figure, a sharp and eagle face, a 
cold, meditative eye rather repelled than attracted those who 
saw him for the first time. Singularly devoid of affectation, 
Newman did not always conceal his intellectual scorn of men 
who made loud pretence with inferior gifts, and the men must 
have been few indeed whose gifts were not inferior to his. 
Newman had no scorn for intellectual inferiority in itself ; he 
despised it only when it gave itself airs. His influence while 
he was the vicar of St. Mary's at Oxford was profound. No 
opponent ever spoke of Newman but with admiration for his 
intellect and respect for his character. Dr. Newman had a 
younger brother, Francis W. Newman, who also possessed 
remarkable ability and earnestness. He too was distinguished 
at Oxford, and seemed to have a great career there before him. 
But he was drawn one way by the wave of thought before his 
more famous brother had been drawn the other way. In 
1880, the younger Newman found himself prevented by 

2* ' 



34 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. n. 

religious scruples from subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles 
for his master's degree. He left the university, and wandered 
for years in the East, endeavouring, not very successfully 
perhaps, to teach Christianity on its broadest base to Maho- 
metans ; and then he came back to England to take his place 
among the leaders of a certain school of free thought. 

When Dr. Newman wrote the famous Tract ' No. 90,' foi 
which he was censured, he bowed to the authority of his 
bishop. But he did not admit any change of opinion ; and 
indeed soon after the gradual working of Newman's mind 
became evident to all the world. The brightest and most 
penetrating intellect in the Church of England was withdrawn 
from her service, and Newman went over to the Church of 
Eome. To this result had the inquiry conducted him which 
had led his friend Dr. Pusey merely to endeavour to incor- 
porate some of the mysticism and the symbols of Eome with 
the ritual of the English Protestant Church ; which had 
brought Keble only to seek a more liberal and truly Christian 
temper for the faith of the Protestant ; and which had sent 
Francis Newman into Eadicalism and Eationalism. 

Still greater was the practical importance, at least in 
defined results, of the movement which went on in Scotland 
about the same time. 

The case was briefly this. During the reign of Queen 
Anne an Act was passed which took from the Church courts 
in Scotland the free choice as to the appointment of pastors 
by subjecting the power of the presbytery to the control and 
interference of the law courts. In an immense number of 
Scotch parishes the minister was nominated by a lay patron ; 
and if the presbytery found nothing to condemn in him as to 
' life, literature and doctrine,' they were compelled to appoint 
him, however unwelcome he might be to the parishioners. 
Now it is obvious that a man might have a blameless character, 
sound religious views, and an excellent education, and never- 
theless be totally unfitted to undertake the charge of a Scottish 
parish. The effect of the power conferred on the law courts 
and the patron was simply in a great number of cases to send 
families away from the Church of Scotland and into volun- 
taryism. 

Dr. Chalmers became the leader of the movement which 
was destined within two years from the time we are now 
surveying to cause the disruption of the ancient Kirk of 
Scotland. No man could be better fitted for the task of 



ch. ii. SOME TROUBLES TO THE NEW REIGN. 35 

leadership in such a movement. He was beyond compari- 
son the foremost man in the Scottish Church. He was the 
greatest pulpit orator in Scotland, or, indeed, in Great 
Britain. As a writer on political economy he had made 
a distinct mark. From having been in his earlier days 
the minister of an obscure Scottish village congregation, 
he had suddenly sprung into fame. He was the Hon of any 
city which he happened to visit. If he preached in London, 
the church was crowded with the leaders of politics, science 
and fashion, eager to hear him. Chalmers spoke with a 
massive eloquence in keeping with his powerful frame and his 
broad brow and his commanding presence. His speeches 
were a strenuous blending of argument and emotion. They 
appealed at once to the strong common sense and to the 
deep religious convictions of his Scottish audiences. His 
whole soul was in his work as a leader of religious move- 
ments. He cared little or nothing for any popularity or fame 
that he might have won. The Free Church of Scotland is 
his monument. He did not make that Church. It was not 
the work of one man, or, strictly speaking, of one generation. 
It grew naturally out of the inevitable struggle between Church 
and State. But Chalmers did more than any other man to 
decide the moment and the manner of its coming into existence, 
and its success is his best monument. 

On May 18, 1843, some five hundred ministers of the 
Church of Scotland, under the leadership of Dr. Chalmers, 
seceded from the old Kirk and set about to form the Free 
Church. The Government of Sir Robert Peel had made a 
weak effort at compromise by legislative enactment, but had 
declined to introduce any legislation which should free the 
Kirk of Scotland from the control of the civil courts, and 
there was no course for those who held the views of Dr. 
Chalmers but to withdraw from the Church which admitted 
that claim of State control. The history of Scotland is illus- 
trated by many great national deeds. No deed it tells of sur- 
passes in dignity and in moral grandeur that secession — to 
cite the words of the protest — ' from an Establishment which 
we loved and prized, through interference with conscience, 
the dishonour done to Christ's crown, and the rejection of hia 
sole and supreme authority as King in his Church.' 



36 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. ill. 

CHAPTEK III. 

DECLINE AND FALL OF THE MELBOUENE MINISTRY. 

Meanwhile things were looking ill with the Melbourne 
Ministry. The Jamaica Bill put them in great perplexity. 
This was a measure brought in on April 9, 1839, to make tem- 
porary provision for the government of the island of Jamaica, 
by setting aside the House of Assembly for five years, and 
during that time empowering the governor and council with 
three salaried commissioners to manage the affairs of the colony. 
In other words, the Melbourne Ministry proposed to suspend 
for five years the constitution of Jamaica. No body of persons 
can be more awkwardly placed than a Whig Ministry proposing 
to set aside a constitutional government anywhere. Such a 
proposal may be a necessary measure ; it may be unavoidable ; 
but it always comes with a bad grace from Whigs or Liberals, 
and gives their enemies a handle against them which they 
cannot fail to use to some purpose. 

In the case of the Jamaica Bill there was some excuse 
for the harsh policy. After the abolition of slavery, the for- 
mer masters in the island found it very hard to reconcile 
themselves to the new condition of things. They could not 
all at once understand that their former slaves were to be their 
equals before the law. On the other hand, some of the Jamaica 
negroes were too ignorant to understand that they had acquired 
any rights ; others were a little too clamorous in their assertion. 
The Imperial governors and officials were generally and justly 
eager to protect the negroes ; and the result was a constant 
quarrel between the Jamaica House of Assembly and the 
representatives of the Home Government. A bill, very neces- 
sary in itself, was passed by the Imperial Parliament for the 
better regulation of prisons in Jamaica, and the House of 
Assembly refused to submit to any such legislation. Under 
these circumstances the Melbourne Ministry proposed the 
suspension of the constitution of the island. The measure 
was opposed not only by Peel and the Conservatives, but by 
many Badicals. The Ministry only had a majority of five in 
favour of their measure. This, of course, was a virtual defeat. 
The Ministry acknowledged it and resigned. Their defeat was 
a humiliation ; their resignation an inevitable submission ; but 
they came back to office almost immediately under conditions 



ch. in. FALL OF TILE MELBOURNE MINISTRY. 37 

that made the humiliation more humbling, and rendered their 
subsequent career more difficult by far than their past struggle 
for existence had been. 

The famous controversy known as the ' Bedchamber Ques- 
tion ' made a way back for the Whigs into place. Gulliver 
ought to have had an opportunity of telling such a story to the 
king of the Brobdingnagians, in order the better to impress him 
with a clear idea of the logical beauty of constitutional govern- 
ment. When Lord Melbourne resigned, the Queen sent for Peel, 
and told him with a simple and girlish frankness that she was 
sorry to have to part with her late ministers, of whose con- 
duct she entirely approved, but that she bowed to constitutional 
usage. This must have been rather an astonishing beginning to 
the grave and formal Peel ; but he was not a man to think any 
worse of the candid young Sovereign for her outspoken ways. 
The negotiations went on very smoothly as to the colleagues 
Peel meant to recommend to her Majesty, until he happened to 
notice the composition of the royal household as regarded the 
ladies most closely in attendance on the Queen. For example, 
he found that the wife of Lord Normanby and the sister of 
Lord Morpeth were the two ladies in closest attendance on her 
Majesty. Now it has to be borne in mind — it was proclaimed 
again and again during the negotiations — that the chief diffi- 
culty of the Conservatives would necessarily be in Ireland, 
where their policy would be altogether opposed to that of the 
Whigs. Lord Normanby had been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 
under the Whigs, and Lord Morpeth, the amiable and accom- 
plished Lord Carlisle of later time, Irish Secretary. It certainly 
could not be satisfactory for Peel to try to work a new Irish 
policy while the closest household companions of the Queen 
were the wife and sister of the displaced statesmen who directly 
represented the policy he had to supersede. Had this point of 
view been made clear to the Sovereign at first, it is hardly pos- 
sible that any serious difficulty could have arisen. The Queen 
must have seen the obvious reasonableness of Peel's request ; 
nor is it to be supposed that the two ladies in question could 
have desired to hold their places under such circumstances. 
But unluckily some misunderstanding took place at the very be- 
ginning of the conversations on this point. Peel only desired to 
press for the retirement of the ladies holding the higher offices ; 
he did not intend to ask for any change affecting a place lower 
in official rank than that 01 lady of the bedchamber. But 
somehow or other he conveyed to the mind of the Queen a 



38 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. hi. 

different idea. She thought he meant to insist, as a matter 
of principle, upon the removal of all her familiar attendants 
and household associates. Under this impression she con- 
sulted Lord John Eussell, who advised her on what he under- 
stood to be the state of the facts. On his advice the Queen 
stated in reply that she could not * consent to a course which 
she conceives to be contrary to usage and is repugnant to her 
feelings.' Sir Eobert Peel held firm to his stipulation ; and 
the chance of his then forming a Ministry was at an end. 
Lord Melbourne and his colleagues had to be recalled ; and at 
a Cabinet .meeting they adopted a minute declaring it reason- 
able ' that the great offices of the Court and situations in the 
household held by members of Parliament should be included 
in the political arrangements made on a change in the Ad- 
ministration ; but they are not of opinion that a similar prin- 
ciple should be applied or extended to the offices held by ladies 
in her Majesty's household.' 

In the country the incident created great excitement. 
Some Liberals bluntly insisted that it was not right in such 
a matter to consult the feelings of the Sovereign at all, and 
that the advice of the minister, and his idea of what was 
for the good of the country, ought alone to be considered. 
Nothing could be more undesirable than the position in 
which Lord Melbourne and his colleagues had allowed the 
Sovereign to place herself. The more people in general came 
to think over the matter, the more clearly it was seen that 
Peel was in the right, although he had not made himself 
understood at first, and had, perhaps, not shown all through 
enough of consideration for the novelty of the young Sove- 
reign's position. But no one could deliberately maintain the 
position at first taken up by the Whigs ; and in point of fact 
they were soon glad to drop it as quickly and quietly as possible. 
The whole question, it may be said at once, was afterwards set- 
tled by a sensible compromise. It was agreed that on a change 
of Ministry the Queen would listen to any representation from 
the incoming Prime Minister as to the composition of her 
household, and would arrange for the retirement ' of their own 
accord ' of any ladies who were so closely related to the 
leaders of Opposition as to render their presence inconvenient. 
The Whigs came back to office utterly discredited. They had 
to tinker up somehow a new Jamaica Bill. They had declared 
that they could not remain in office unless they were allowed 
to deal in a certain way with Jamaica ; and now that they 



CH. in. FALL OF THE MELBOURNE MINISTRY. 39 

were back again in office, they could not avoid trying to do 
something with the Jamaica business. They therefore intro- 
duced a new bill which was a mere compromise put together 
in the hope of its being allowed to pass. It was allowed to 
pass, after a fashion; that is, when the Opposition hi the 
House of Lords had tinkered it and amended it at their 
pleasure. The bedchamber question in fact had thrown 
Jamaica out of perspective. The unfortunate island must do 
the best it could now ; in this country statesmen had graver 
matters to think of. Sir Eobert Peel could not govern with 
Lady Normanby ; the Whigs would not govern without her. 

The Melbourne Government were prejudiced in the public 
mind by these events, and by the attacks for which they 
gave so large an opportunity. The feeling in some parts 
of the country was still sentimentally with the Queen. At 
many a dinner-table it became the fashion to drink the 
health of her Majesty with a punning addition, not belonging 
to an order of wit any higher than that which in other 
days toasted the King ' over the water ; ' or prayed of heaven 
to ' send this crumb well down.' The Queen was toasted 
as the sovereign of spirit who ' would not let her belles 
be peeled.' But the Ministry were almost universally believed 
to have placed themselves in a ridiculous light, and to have 
crept again into office ' behind the petticoats of the ladies in 

waiting^ __ 

"On January 16, 1840, the Queen, opening Parliament in 
person, announced her intention to marry her cousin, Prince 
Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha — a step which she trusted would 
be ' conducive to the interests of my people as well as to my 
own domestic happiness.' In the discussion which followed in 
the House of Commons, Sir Eobert Peel observed that her 
Majesty had ' the singular good fortune to be able to gratify 
her private feelings, while she performs her public duty, and to 
obtain the best guarantee for happiness by contracting an. 
alliance founded on affection.' Peel spoke the simple truth ; 
it was indeed a marriage founded on affection. No marriage 
contracted in the humblest class could have been more entirely 
a union of love, and more free from what might be called 
selfish and worldly considerations. The Queen had for a long 
time loved her cousin. He was nearly her own age, the Queen 
being the elder by three months and two or three days. 
Francis Charles Augustus Albert Emmanuel was the full name 
pf the young Prince. He was the second son of Ernest, Duke 



40 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. hi. 

of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and of his wife Louisa, daughter of 
Augustus, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. Prince Albert was 
born at the Eosenau, one of his father's residences, near 
Coburg, on August 26, 1819. 

Prince Albert was a young man to win the heart of any 
girl. He was singularly handsome, graceful and gifted. In 
princes, as we know, a small measure of beauty and accom- 
plishment suffices to throw courtiers and court ladies into 
transports of admiration ; but had Prince Albert been the son 
of a farmer or a butler, he must have been admired for his 
singular personal attractions. He had had a sound and a 
varied education. He had been brought up as if he were to 
be a professional musician, a professional chemist or botanist, 
and a professor of history and belles lettres and the fine arts. 
The scientific and the literary were remarkably blended in his 
bringing-up. He had begun to study the constitutional history 
of States, and was preparing himself to take an interest in poli- 
tics. There was much of the practical and business-like about 
him, as he showed in after-life ; he loved farming, and took a deep 
interest in machinery and in the growth of industrial science. 
His tastes were for a quiet, domestic and unostentatious life — a 
life of refined culture, of happy calm evenings, of art and poetry 
and genial communion with Nature. He was made happy by 
the songs of birds, and delighted in sitting alone and playing 
the organ. But there was in him too a great deal of the 
political philosopher. He loved to hear political and other 
questions well argued out, and once observed that a false 
argument jarred on his nerves as much as a false note in music. 
He seems to have had from his youth an all-pervading sense of 
duty. So far as we can guess, he was almost absolutely free 
from the ordinary follies, not to say sins, of youth. Young as 
he was when he married the Queen, he devoted himself at once 
to what he conscientiously believed to be the duties of his 
station with a self-control and self-devotion rare even among 
the aged, and almost unknown in youth. He gave up every 
habit, however familiar and dear, every predilection, no mat- 
ter how sweet, every indulgence of sentiment or amusement, 
that in any way threatened to interfere with the steadfast per- 
formance of the part he had assigned to himself. No man 
ever devoted himself more faithfully to the difficult duties of a 
high and new situation, or kept more strictly to his resolve. 
It was no task to him to be a tender husband and a loving 
lather. This was a part of his sweet, pure and affectionate 



ch. in. FALL OF THE MELBOURNE MINISTRY, 41 

nature. It may well be doubted whether any otliei queen 
ever had a married life so happy as that of Queen Victoria. 

The marriage of the Queen and the Prince took place on 
February 10, 1840. The reception given by the people in 
general to the Prince on his landing in England a few days 
before the ceremony, and on the day of the marriage, was 
cordial and even enthusiastic. But it is not certain whether 
there was a very cordial feeling to the Prince among all classes 
of politicians. A rumour of the most absurd kind had got 
abroad in certain circles that Prince Albert was not a Protes- 
tant — that he was in fact a member of the Church of Eome. 
Somewhat unfortunately, the declaration of the intended 
marriage to the Privy Council did not mention the fact that 
Albert was a Protestant Prince. The result was that in the 
debate on the address in the House of Lords, an unseemly 
altercation took place, an altercation the more to be re- 
gretted because it might have been so easily spared. The 
question was bluntly raised by no less a person than the 
Duke of Wellington whether the future husband of the Queen 
was or was not a Protestant. The Duke actually charged the 
Ministry with having purposely left out the word ' Protestant ' 
in the announcements in order that they might not offend 
their Irish and Catholic supporters, and moved that the word 
' Protestant ' be inserted in the congratulatory address to the 
Queen, and he carried his point, although Lord Melbourne 
held to the opinion that the word was unnecessary in describ- 
ing a Prince who was not only a Protestant but descended 
from the most Protestant family in Europe. The lack of 
judgment and tact on the part of the Ministry was never more 
clearly shown than in the original omission of the word. 

A few months after the marriage, a bill was passed naming 
Prince Albert Eegent in the possible event of the death of the 
Queen, leaving issue. The passing of this bill was naturally 
regarded as of much importance to Prince Albert. It gave him 
to some extent the status in the country which he had not had 
before. No one could have started with a more resolute 
determination to stand clear of party politics than Prince 
Albert. He accepted at once his position as the husband of 
the Queen of a constitutional country. His own idea of his 
duty was that he should be the private secretary and unofficial 
counsellor of the Queen. To this purpose he devoted himself 
unswervingly. Outside that part of his duties, he constituted 
himself a sort of minister without portfolio of art and educa- 



42 A SHOUT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. ill. 

tion. He took an interest, and often a leading part, in all 
projects and movements relating to the spread of education, 
the culture of art, and the promotion of industrial science. 
Yet it was long before he was thoroughly understood by the 
country. It was long before he became in any degree popular, 
and it may be doubted whether he ever was thoroughly and 
generally popular. Not perhaps until his untimely death did 
The country find out how entirely disinterested and faithful his 
life had been, and how he had made the discharge of duty his 
business and his task. Prince Albert had not the ways of an 
Englishman, and the tendency of Englishmen, then as now, 
was to assume that to have manners other than those of an 
Englishman was to be so far unworthy of confidence. He 
was not made to shine in commonplace society. He could talk 
admirably about something, but he had not the gift of talking 
about nothing, and probably would not have cared much to cul- 
tivate such a faculty. He was fond of suggesting small innova- 
tions and improvements in established systems, to the annoy- 
ance of men with set ideas, who liked their own ways best. Thus 
it happened that he remained for many years, if not exactly 
unappreciated, yet not thoroughly appreciated, and that a con- 
siderable and very influential section of society was always ready 
to cavil at what he said, and find motive for suspicion in most 
things that he did. Perhaps he was best understood and most 
cordially appreciated among the poorer classes of his wife's sub- 
jects. He found also more cordial approval generally among 
the Eadicals than among the Tories, or even the Whigs. 

One reform which Prince Albert worked earnestly to bring 
about, was the abolition of duelling in the army. Nothing can 
testify more strikingly to the rapid growth of a genuine civili- 
sation in Queen Victoria's reign than the utter discontinuance 
of the duelling system. When the Queen came to the throne, 
and for years after, it was still in full force. The duel plays 
a conspicuous part in the fiction and the drama of the Sove- 
reign's earlier years. It was a common incident of all poli- 
tical controversies. It was an episode of most contested 
elections. It was often resorted to for the purpose of deciding 
the right or wrong of a half-drunken quarrel over a card table. 
It formed as common a theme of gossip as an elopement or a 
bankruptcy. Most of the eminent statesmen who were 
prominent in the earlier part of the Queen's reign had fought 
duels. At the present hour a duel in England would seem as 
absurd and barbarous an anachronism as an ordeal by touch 
or a witch-burning. 



ch. in. FALL OF THE MELBOURNE MINISTRY. 43 

This is perhaps as suitable a place as any other to intro- 
duce some notice of the attempts that were made from time to 
time upon the life of the Queen. It is proper to say something 
of them, although not one possessed the slightest political im- 
portance, or could be said to illustrate anything more than 
sheer lunacy, or that morbid vanity and thirst for notoriety 
that is nearly akin to genuine madness. The first attempt was 
made on June 10, 1840, by Edward Oxford, a potboy of seven- 
teen, who fired two shots at the Queen as she was driving up 
Constitution Hill with Prince Albert, but happily missed in 
each case. The jury pronounced him insane, and he was ordered 
to be kept in a lunatic asylum during her Majesty's pleasure. 
On May 30, 1842, a man named John Francis, son of a 
machinist in Drury Lane, fired a pistol at the Queen as she was 
driving down Constitution Hill, on the very spot where Oxford's 
attempt was made. Francis was sentenced to death, but her 
Majesty herself was anxious that the death- sentence should 
not be carried into effect, and it was finally commuted to one 
of transportation for life. The very day after this mitigation 
of punishment became publicly known another attempt was 
made by a hunch-backed lad named Bean, as the Queen was 
passing from Buckingham Palace to the Chapel Koyal. The 
ambition which fired most or all of the miscreants who thus 
disturbed the Queen and the country was that of the mounte- 
bank rather than of the assassin. A bill was introduced 
by Sir Bobert Peel making such attempts punishable by trans- 
portation for seven years, or by imprisonment for a term not 
exceeding three years, * the culprit to be publicly or privately 
whipped as often and in such manner as the court shall 
direct, not exceeding thrice.' Bean was convicted under this 
act and sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment in Mill- 
bank Penitentiary. This did not, however, conclude the 
attacks on the Queen. An Irish bricklayer, named Hamilton, 
fired a pistol, charged only with powder, at her Majesty, on 
Constitution Hill, on May 19, 1849, and was sentenced to seven 
years' transportation. A man named Kobert Pate, once a 
lieutenant of hussars, struck her Majesty on the face with a 
stick as she was leaving the Duke of Cambridge's residence in 
her carriage on May 27, 1850. This man was sentenced to 
seven years' transportation, but the judge paid so much atten- 
tion to the plea of insanity set up on his behalf, as to omit 
from his punishment the whipping which might have been 
ordered. On February 29, 1872, a lad of seventeen, named 



44 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, en. IV. 

Arthur O'Connor, presented a pistol at the Queen as she wag 
entering Buckingham Palace after a drive. The pistol, how- 
ever, proved to be unloaded — an antique and useless or harm- 
less weapon, with a flint lock which was broken, and in the 
barrel a piece of greasy red rag. The wretched lad held a 
paper in one hand which was found to be some sort of peti- 
tion on behalf of the Fenian prisoners. He was sentenced to 
twelve months' imprisonment and a whipping. Ten years 
later, on March 2, 1882, a man named Boderick Maclean 
fired at and missed the Queen as she was driving from the 
railway station at Windsor. Maclean was found to be a 
person of weak intellect who had at one time been positively 
insane, and the attempt had no political significance whatever. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE AFGHAN WAE. 

The earliest days of the Peel Ministry fell upon trouble, not 
indeed at home, but abroad. At home the prospect still seemed 
bright. The birth of the Queen's eldest son was an event 
welcomed by national congratulation. There was still great 
distress in the agricultural districts ; but there was a general 
confidence that the financial genius of Peel would quickly find 
some way to make burdens light, and that the condition of 
things all over the country would begin to mend. It was a 
region far removed from the knowledge and the thoughts of 
most Englishmen that supplied the news now beginning to 
come into England day after day, and to thrill the country 
with the tale of one of the greatest disasters to English policy 
and English arms to be found in all the record of our dealings 
with the East. 

News travelled slowly then; and it was quite in the 
ordinary course of things that some part of the empire might 
be torn with convulsion for months before London knew that 
the even and ordinary condition of things had been disturbed. 
In this instance, the rejoicings at the accession of the young 
Queen were still going on, when a series of events had begun 
in Central Asia destined to excite the profoundest emotion in 
England, and to exercise the most powerful influence upon 
our foreign policy down to the present hour. On September 



CH. IV. THE AFGHAN WAR. 4$ 

20, 1837, Captain Alexander Burnes arrived at Cabul, tlia 
capital of the state of Cabul, in the' north of Afghanistan. 
Burnes was a famous Orientalist and traveller ; he had con- 
ducted an expedition into Central Asia ; had published his 
travels in Bokhara, and had been sent on a mission by the 
Indian Government, in whose service he was, to study the 
navigation of the Indus. The object of his journey to Cabul 
in 1837 was to enter into commercial relations with Dost 
Mahomed, then ruler of Cabul, and with other chiefs of the 
western regions. 

The great region of Afghanistan has been called the land 
of transition between Eastern and Western Asia. All the 
great ways that lead from Persia to India pass through that 
region. There is a proverb which declares that no one can be 
king of Hindostan without first becoming lord of Cabul. The 
Afghans are the ruling nation, but among them had long been 
settled Hindoos, Arabs, Armenians, Abyssinians, and men of 
other races and religions. The founder of the Afghan empire, 
Ahmed Shah, died in 1773. He had made an empire which 
stretched from Herat on the west to Sirhind on the east, and 
from the Oxus and Cashmere on the north to the Arabian Sea 
and the mouths of the Indus on the south. The death of his 
son, Timur Shah, delivered the kingdom up to the hostile 
factions, intrigues and quarrels of his sons ; the leaders of a 
powerful tribe, the Barukzyes, took advantage of the events 
that arose out of this condition of things to dethrone the 
descendants of Ahmed Shah. When Captain Burnes visited 
Afghanistan in 1832, the only part of all their great inheri- 
tance which yet remained with the descendants of Ahmed Shah 
was the principality of Herat. The remainder of Afghanistan 
was parcelled out between Dost Mahomed and his brothers. 
Dost Mahomed was a man of extraordinary ability and energy. 
Although he was a usurper he was a sincere lover of his 
country, and on the whole a wise and just ruler. When Captain 
Burnes visited Dost Mahomed, Dost Mahomed professed to 
be a sincere friend of the English Government and people. 
There was, however, at that time a quarrel going on between 
the Shah of Persia and the Prince of Herat, the last enthroned 
representative, as has been already said, of the great family on 
whose fall Dost Mahomed and his brothers had mounted into 
power. The strong impression at the time hi England, and 
among the authorities in India, was that Persia herself was 
but a puppet in the hands of Bussia, and that the attack on 



46 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ell. iv. 

Herat was the first step of a great movement of Russia towards 
our Indian dominion. 

Undoubtedly Russia did set herself for some reason to win 
the friendship and alliance of Dost Mahomed ; and Captain 
Burnes was for his part engaged in the same endeavour. 
Burnes always insisted that Dost Mahomed himself was sin- 
cerely anxious to become an ally of England, and that he 
offered more than once on his own free part to dismiss the 
Russian agents even without seeing them, if Burnes desired 
him to do so. But for some reason Burnes's superiors had 
the profoundest distrust of Dost Mahomed. It was again and 
again impressed on Burnes that he must regard Dost Mahomed 
as a treacherous enemy and as a man playing the part of Persia 
and of Russia. 

Captain Burnes then was placed in the painful difficulty 
of having to carry out a policy of which he entirely disap- 
proved. He believed in Dost Mahomed as a friend, and he 
was ordered to regard him as an enemy. On the other hand, 
Dost Mahomed was placed in a position of great difficulty and 
danger. If England would not support him, he must for his 
own safety find alliances elsewhere ; in Russian statecraft for 
example. Runj eet Singh, the daring and successful adventurer 
who had annexed the whole province of Cashmere to bis 
dominions, was the enemy of Dost Mahomed and the faithful 
ally of England. Dost Mahomed thought the British Govern- 
ment could assist him in coming to terms with Runj eet Singh, 
and Burnes had assured him that the British Government 
would do all it could to establish satisfactory terms of peace 
between Afghanistan and the Punjaub, over which Runj eet 
Singh ruled. Burnes, however, was unable to impress his 
superiors with any belief either in Dost Mahomed or in the 
policy which he himself advocated. The English Government 
had presented to the House of Commons his despatches in so 
mutilated and altered a form, that Burnes was made to seem 
as if he actually approved and recommended the policy which 
he especially warned us to avoid. The result was that Lord 
Auckland, the Governor- General of India, at length resolved 
to treat Dost Mahomed as an enemy, and to drive him from 
Cabul. Lord Auckland, therefore, entered into a treaty with 
Runjeet Singh and Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk, the exiled repre- 
sentative of what we may call the legitimist rulers of 
Afghanistan, for the restoration of the latter to the throne of 
his ancestors, and for the destruction of the power of Dost 
Mahomed. 



CH. iv. THE AFGHAN WAR. 4; 

Shall Soojah-ool-Moolk was at the time living in exile, 
without the faintest hope of ever again being restored to hia 
dominions. We pulled the poor man out of his obscurity, 
told him that his people were yearning for him, and that we 
would set him on his throne once more. 

We conquered Dost Mahomed and dethroned him. He 
made a bold and brilliant, sometimes even a splendid resistance. 
As we approached Cabul, Dost Mahomed abandoned his capital 
and fled with a few horsemen across the Indus. Shah Soojah 
entered Cabul accompanied by the British officers. It was to 
have been a triumphal entry. The hearts of those who believed 
in his cause must have sunk within them when they saw how 
the Shah was received by the people. The city received him 
in sullen silence. Few of its people condescended even to 
turn out to see him as he passed. The vast majority stayed 
away and disdained even to look at him. One would have 
thought that the least observant eye must have seen that his 
throne could not last a moment longer than the time during 
which the strength of Britain was willing to support it. The 
British army, however, withdrew, leaving only a contingent 
of some eight thousand men, besides the Shah's own hirelings, 
to maintain him for the present. Sir W. Macnaghten seems 
to have really believed that the work was done, and that Shah 
Soojah was as safe on his throne as Queen Victoria. He was 
destined to be very soon and very cruelly undeceived. 

Dost Mahomed made more than one effort to regain his 
place. He invaded Shah Soojah's dominions, and on November 
2, 1840, he won the admiration of the English themselves by 
the brilliant stand he made against them. In this battle of 
Purwandurrah victory might not unreasonably have been 
claimed for Dost Mahomed. But Dost Mahomed had the 
wisdom of a statesman as well as the genius of a soldier. He 
knew well that he could not hold out against the strength of 
England. The evening after his brilliant exploit in the field 
Dost Mahomed rode quietly up to the quarters of Sir W. 
Macnaghten, announced himself as Dost Mahomed, tendered 
to the envoy the sword that had flashed so splendidly across 
the field of the previous day's fight, and surrendered himself 
a prisoner. His sword was returned ; he was treated with all 
honour; and a few days afterwards he was sent to India, 
where a residence and a revenue were assigned to him. 

But the withdrawal of Dost Mahomed from the scene did 
nothing to secure the reign of the unfortunate Shah Soojah. 



48 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. iv. 

Sir W. Macnaghten was warned of clanger, but seemed to take 
no heed. Some fatal blindness appears to have suddenly fallen 
on the eyes of our people in Cabul. On November 2, 1841, 
an insurrection broke out. Sir Alexander Burnes lived in the 
city itself ; Sir W. Macnaghten and the military commander, 
Major-General Elphinstone, were with the troops in canton- 
ments at some little distance outside the city. The insurrec- 
tion might have been put down in the first instance easily, 
but it was allowed to grow up without attempt at control. 
Sir Alexander Burnes could not be got to believe that it was 
anything serious even when a fanatical and furious mob were 
besieging his own house. The fanatics were especially bitter 
against Burnes, because they believed that he had been guilty 
of treachery. They accused hhn of having pretended to be 
the friend of Dost Mahomed, deceived him, and brought the 
English into the country. To the last Burnes refused to 
believe that he was in danger. He harangued the raging 
mob, and endeavoured to bring them to reason. He was 
murdered in the tumult. He and his brother and all those 
with them were hacked to pieces with Afghan knives. He 
was only in his thirty- seventh year when he was murdered. 
Fate seldom showed with more strange and bitter malice her 
proverbial irony than when she made him the first victim of 
the policy adopted in despite of his best advice and his strongest 
warnings. 

The murder of Burnes was only a beginning. The whole 
country threw itself into insurrection. The Afghans attacked 
the cantonments and actually compelled the English to 
abandon the forts in which all our commissariat was stored. 
We were thus threatened with famine even if we could resist 
the enemy in arms. We were strangely unfortunate in our 
civil and military leaders. Sir W. Macnaghten was a man 
of high character and good purpose, but he was weak and 
credulous. The commander, General Elphinstone, was old, 
infirm, tortured by disease, broken down both in mind and body, 
incapable of forming a purpose of his own, or of holding to 
one suggested by anybody else. His second in command was 
a far stronger and abler man, but unhappily the two could 
never agree. 

A new figure appeared on the scene, a dark and a fierce 
apparition. This was Akbar Khan, the favourite son of Dost 
Mahomed. He was a daring, a clever, an unscrupulous young 
man. From the moment when he entered Cabul he became 



CH. IV. THE AFGHAN WAR, 49 

the real leader of the insurrection against Shah Soojah and 
us. Macnaghten, persuaded by the military commander 
that the position of things was hopeless, consented to enter 
into negotiations with Akbar Khan. Akbar Khan received 
him at first with contemptuous insolence — as a haughty con- 
queror receives some ignoble and humiliated adversary. It 
was agreed that the British troops should quit Afghanistan at 
once ; that Dost Mahomed and his family should be sent back 
to Afghanistan; that on his return the unfortunate Shah 
Soojah should be allowed to take himself off to India or where 
he would ; and that some British officers should be left at 
Cabul as hostages for the fulfilment of the conditions. 

The evacuation did not take place at once, although the 
fierce winter was setting in, and the snow was falling heavily, 
ominously. On both sides there were dairyings and delays. At 
last Akbar Khan made a new and startling proposition to our 
envoy. It was that they two should enter into a secret treaty, 
should unite their arms against the other chiefs, and should 
keep Shah Soojah on the throne as nominal king, with Akbar 
Khan as his vizier. Macnaghten caught at the proposals. 
He had entered into terms of negotiation with the Afghan 
chiefs together ; he now consented to enter into a secret treaty 
with one of the chiefs to turn their joint arms against the 
others. It would be idle and shameful to attempt to defend 
such a policy. When every excuse has been thought of, we 
must still be glad to believe that there are not many English- 
men who would, under any circumstances, have consented 
even to give a hearing to the proposals of Akbar Khan. 

Macnaghten' s error was dearly expiated. He went out 
at noon next day to confer with Akbar Khan on the banks of 
the neighbouring river. Three of his officers were with him. 
Akbar Khan was ominously surrounded by friends and re- 
tainers. Not many words were spoken ; the expected con- 
ference had hardly begun when a signal was given or an order 
issued by Akbar Khan, and the envoy and the officers were 
suddenly seized from behind. A scene of wild confusion 
followed, in which hardly anything is clear and certain but 
the one most horrible incident. The envoy struggled with 
Akbar Khan, who had himself seized Macnaghten ; Akbar 
Khan drew from his belt one of a pair of pistols which 
Macnaghten had presented to him a short time before, and 
shot him through the body. The fanatics who were crowding 
round hacked the body to pieces with their knives. Of the 
3 



$o A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ctt. IV. 

three officers one was killed on the spot ; the other two were 
forced to mount Afghan horses and carried away as prisoners. 

It seems certain that the treachery of Akbar, base as it 
was, did not contemplate more than the seizure of the envoy 
and his officers. On the fatal day the latter resisted and 
struggled ; Akbar Khan heard a cry of alarm that the English 
soldiers were coming out of cantonments to rescue the envoy ; 
and, wild with passion, he suddenly drew his pistol and fired. 
This was the statement made again and again by Akbar Khan 
himself. The explanation does not much relieve the darkness 
of Akbar Khan's character. There is not the slightest reason 
to suppose that he would have shrunk from any treachery 
or any cruelty which served his purpose. But it is well to 
bear in mind that poor Macnaghten would not have been 
murdered had he not consented to meet Akbar Khan and treat 
with him on a proposition to which an English official should 
never have listened. 

The little English force in the cantonments did not know 
until the following day that any calamity had befallen the 
envoy. On December 24, 1841, came a letter from one of the 
officers seized by Akbar Khan, accompanying proposals for a 
treaty from the Afghan chiefs. It is hard now to understand 
how any English officers could have consented to enter into 
terms with the murderers of Macnaghten before his mangled 
body could well have ceased to bleed. We can all see the 
difficulty of their position. General Elphinstone and his 
second in command, Brigadier Shelton, were convinced that 
it would be equally impossible to stay where they were or to 
cut their way through the Afghans. But it might have 
occurred to many that they were nevertheless not bound to 
treat with the Afghans ; that they were not ordered by fate to 
accept whatever the conquerors chose to offer. One English 
officer of mark did counsel his superiors in this spirit. This 
was Major Eldred Pottinger. Pottinger was for cutting their 
way through all enemies and difficulties as far as they could, 
and then occupying the ground with their dead bodies. But 
his advice was hardly ta*ken into consideration. It was deter- 
mined to treat with the Afghans ; and treating with the 
Afghans now meant accepting any terms the Afghans chose 
to impose on their fallen enemies. In the negotiations that 
went on some written documents were exchanged. One of 
these, drawn up by the English negotiators, contains an 
appeal to the Afghan conquerors which we believe to ba 



CH. IV. THE AFGHAN WAR, 5 1 

absolutely unique in the history of British dealings with 
armed enemies. ' In friendship, kindness and consideration 
are necessary, not overpowering the weak with sufferings I ' 
In friendship ! — we appealed to the friendship of Macnaghten's 
murderers ; to the friendship, in any case, of the man whose 
father we had dethroned and driven into exile. Not over- 
powering the weak with sufferings ! The weak were the 
English ! One might fancy he was reading the plaintive and 
piteous appeal of some forlorn and feeble tribe of helples3 
half-breeds for the mercy of arrogant and mastering rulers. 
Only the other day, it would seem, these men had received in 
surrender the bright sword of Dost Mahomed. Now they 
could only plead for a little gentleness of consideration, and 
had no thought of resistance, and did not any longer seem to 
know how to die. 

We accepted the terms of treaty offered to us. The 
English were at once to take themselves off out of Afghan- 
istan, giving up all their guns except six, which they were 
allowed to retain for their necessary defence in their mournful 
journey home ; they were to leave behind all the treasure, and 
to guarantee the payment of something additional for the safe 
conduct of the poor little army to Peshawur or to Jellalabad ; 
and they were to hand over six officers as hostages for the 
due fulfilment of the conditions. The conditions included the 
immediate release of Dost Mahomed and his family and their 
return to Afghanistan. When the treaty was signed, the 
officers who had been seized when Macnaghten was murdered 
were released. 

The withdrawal from Cabul began. It was the heart of a 
cruel winter. The English had to make their way through 
the awful Pass of Koord Cabul. This stupendous gorge runs 
for some five miles between mountain ranges so narrow, lofty 
and grim, that in the winter season the rays of the sun can 
hardly pierce its darkness even at the noontide. Down the 
centre dashed a precipitous mountain torrent so fiercely that 
the stern frost of that terrible time could not stay its course. 
The snow lay in masses on the ground ; the rocks and stones 
that raised their heads above the snow in the way of the 
unfortunate travellers were slippery with frost. Soon the 
white snow began to be stained and splashed with blood. 
Fearful as this Koord Cabul Pass was, it was only a degree 
worse than the road which for two whole days the English 
Lad to traverse to reach it. The army which set out fioia 



52 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. iv. 

Cabul numbered more than four thousand righting men, of 
whom Europeans, it should be said, formed but a small pro- 
portion ; and some twelve thousand camp followers of all 
kinds. There were also many women and children. Lady 
Macnaghten, widow of the murdered envoy ; Lady Sale, 
whose gallant husband was holding Jellalabad at the near 
end of the Khyber Pass towards the Indian frontier; Mrs. 
Sturt, her daughter, soon to be widowed by the death of her 
young husband ; Mrs. Trevor and her seven children, and 
many other pitiable fugitives. The winter journey would 
have been cruel and dangerous enough in time of peace ; but 
this journey had to be accomplished in the midst of something 
far worse than common war. At every step of the road, 
every opening of the rocks, the unhappy crowd of confused 
and heterogeneous fugitives were beset by bands of savage 
fanatics, who with their long guns and long knives were 
murdering all they could reach. The English soldiers, weary, 
weak and crippled by frost, could make but a poor fight against 
the savage Afghans. Men, women and children, horses, ponies, 
camels, the wounded, the dying, the dead, all crowded together 
in almost inextricable confusion among the snow and amid 
the relentless enemies. 

Akbar Khan constantly appeared on the scene during this 
journey of terror. At every opening or break of the long 
straggling flight he and his little band of followers showed 
themselves on the horizon, trying still to protect the English 
from utter ruin, as he declared ; come to gloat over their 
misery and to see that it was surely accomplished, some of 
the unhappy English were ready to believe. Yet his presence 
was something that seemed to give a hope of protection. 
Akbar Khan at length startled the English by a proposal that 
the women and children who were with the army should be 
handed over to his custody to be conveyed by him in safety to 
Peshawur. There was nothing better to be done. The 
women and children and the married men whose wives were 
among this party were taken from the unfortunate army and 
placed under the care of Akbar Khan, and Lady Macnaghten 
had to undergo the agony of a personal interview with the 
man whose own hand had killed her husband. Akbar Khan 
was kindly in his language, and declared to the unhappy widow 
that he would give his right arm to undo, if it were possible, 
the deed that he had done. 

The march was resumed ; new horrors set in ; new heaps 



ch. IV. THE AFGHAN WAR. S3 

of corpses stained the snow ; and then Akbar Khan presented 
himself with a fresh proposition. He demanded that General 
Elphinstone, the commander, with his second in command, 
and also one other officer, should hand themselves over to 
him as hostages. He promised if this were done to exert 
himself more than before to restrain the fanatical tribes, and 
also to provide the army in the Koord Cabul Pass with pro- 
visions. There was nothing for it but to submit ; and the 
English general himself became, with the women and children, 
a captive in the hands of the inexorable enemy. ri 

Then the march of the army, without a general, .went on 
again. Soon it became the story of a general witnout an 
army ; before very long there was neither general nor army. 
It is idle to lengthen a tale of mere horrors. The straggling 
remnant of an army entered the Jugdulluk Pass — a dark, 
steep, narrow, ascending path between crags. The miserable 
toilers found that the fanatical, implacable tribes had barricaded 
the pass. All was over. The army of Cabul was finally ex- 
tinguished in that barricaded pass. It was a trap ; the British 
were taken in it. A few mere fugitives escaped irom the 
scene of actual slaughter, and were on the road to Jellalabad, 
where Sale and his little army were holding their own. When 
they were within sixteen miles of Jellalabad the number was 
reduced to six. Of these six, five were killed by straggling 
marauders on the way. One man alone reached Jellalabad 
to tell the tale. Literally one man, Dr. Brydon, came to 
Jellalabad out of a moving host which had numbered in all 
some sixteen thousand when it set out on its march. The 
curious eye will search through history or fiction in vain for 
any picture more thrilling with the suggestions of an awful 
catastrophe than that of this solitary survivor, faint and reeling 
on his jaded horse, as he appeared under the walls of Jellala- 
bad, to bear the tidings of our Thermopylae of pain and shame. 

This is the crisis of the story. The rest is all recovery. The 
garrison at Jellalabad had received before Dr. Brydon' s arrival 
an intimation that they were to go out and march towards India 
in accordance with the terms of the treaty extorted from Elphin- 
stone at Cabul. They very properly declined to be bound by a 
treaty which, as General Sale rightly conjectured, had been 
* forced from our envoy and military commander with the knives 
at their throats.' General Sale's determination was clear and 
simple. ' I propose to hold this place on the part of Government 
until I receive its order to the contrary.' This resolve oi Sale's 



54 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. IV. 

was really the turning point of the history. Akbar Khan besieged 
Jellalabad. The garrison held out fearlessly ; they resisted 
every attempt of Akbar Khan to advance upon their works, 
and at length, when it became certain that General Pollock 
was forcing the Khyber Pass to come to their relief, they issued 
boldly out of their forts, forced a battle on the Afghan chief, 
and completely defeated him. Before Pollock, having gallantly 
fought his way through the Khyber Pass, had reached Jellala- 
bad, the beleaguering army had been entirely defeated and dis- 
persed. General Nott at Candahar was ready now to co- 
operate with General Sale and General Pollock for any move- 
ment on Cabul which the authorities might advise or sanction. 
Meanwhile the unfortunate Shah Soojah, whom we had re- 
stored with so much pomp of announcement to the throne of 
his ancestors, was dead. He was assassinated in Cabul, soon 
after the departure of the British, by the orders of some of 
the chiefs who detested him ; and his body, stripped of its 
royal robes and its many jewels, was flung into a ditch. All 
Shah Soojah owed to us was a few weeks of idle pomp andabsurd 
dreams, a bitter awakening and a shameful death. 

During this time a new Governor- General had arrived in 
India. Lord Auckland's time had run out, and during its 
latter months he had become nerveless and despondent because 
of the utter failure of the policy which in an evil hour for 
himself and his country he had been induced to undertake. 
He was an honourable, kindly gentleman, and the news of 
all the successive calamities fell upon him with a crushing, 
an overwhelming weight. He seemed to have no other idea 
than that of getting all our troops as quickly as might be out of 
Afghanistan, and shaking the dust of the place off our feet for 
ever. He was, in fact, a broken man. 

His successor was Lord Ellenborough. He was well ac- 
quainted with the affairs of India. He had come into office 
under Sir Robert Peel on the resignation of the Melbourne 
Ministry. He was looked upon as a man of great ability and 
energy. It was known that his personal predilections were for 
the career of a soldier. He was fond of telling his hearers 
then and since that the life of a camp was that which he 
should have loved to lead. He was a man of great and, in 
certain lights, apparently splendid abilities. There was a cer- 
tain Orientalism about his language, his aspirations and his 
policy. He loved gorgeousness and dramatic — ill-natured 
persons said theatric — effects. Lite arranged itself in his 



CH. IV. THE AFGHAN" WAR. 55 

eyes as a superb and showy pageant of which it would have 
been his ambition to form the central figure. His eloquence 
was often of a lofty and noble order. But if Lord Ellen- 
borough was in some respects a man of genius, he was also a 
man whose love of mere effects often made him seem like a 
quack. He was a man of great abilities and earnestness, who 
had in him a strong dash of the play-actor, who at the most 
serious moment of emergency always thought of how to dis- 
play himself effectively, and would have met the peril of an 
empire with an overmastering desire to show to the best per- 
sonal advantage. 

Lord Ellenborough's appointment was hailed by all parties 
in India as the most auspicious that could be made. But 
those who thought in this way found themselves suddenly 
disappointed. Lord Ellenborough uttered and wrote a few 
showy sentences about revenging our losses and ' re-establish- 
ing in all its original brilliancy our military character,' and 
then at once he announced that the only object of the Govern- 
ment was to get the troops out of Afghanistan as quickly as 
might be, and almost on any terms. A general outcry was 
raised in India and among the troops in Afghanistan against 
the extraordinary policy which Lord Ellenborough propounded. 
Englishmen, in fact, refused to believe in it ; took it as some- 
thing that must be put aside. The Governor- General himself 
after a while quietly put it aside. He allowed the military 
commanders in Afghanistan to pull their resources together 
and prepare for inflicting signal chastisement on the enemy. 
They were not long in doing this. They encountered the enemy 
wherever he showed himself and defeated him. They recap- 
tured town after town, until at length, on September 15, 1842, 
General Pollock's force entered Cabul. A few days after, as a 
lasting mark of retribution for the crimes which had been 
committed there, the British commander ordered the destruc- 
tion of the great bazaar of Cabul, where the mangled remains 
of the unfortunate envoy Macnaghten had been exhibited in 
brutal triumph and joy to the Afghan populace. 

The captives, or hostages, who were hurried away that 
terrible January night at the command of Akbar Khan had 
yet to be recovered. There was a British general who was 
disposed to leave them to their fate and take no trouble about 
them, and who declared himself under the conviction, from 
the tenor of all Lord Ellenborough's despatches, that the 
recovery of the prisoners was ' a matter of indifference to the 



56 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OV/N TIMES. ch. IV. 

Government.' Better counsels however prevailed. General 
Pollock insisted on an effort being made to recover the 
prisoners before the troops began to return to India, and he 
appointed to this noble duty the husband of one of the hostage 
ladies — Sir Bobert Sale. The prisoners were recovered with 
greater ease than was expected — so many of them as were 
yet alive. Poor General Elphinstone had long before suc- 
cumbed to disease and hardship. The ladies had gone through 
strange privations. They suffered almost every fierce alterna- 
tion of cold and heat. They had to live on the coarsest fare ; 
they were lodged in a manner which would have made the 
most wretched prison accommodation of a civilised country 
seem luxurious by comparison ; they were in constant uncer- 
tainty and fear, not knowing what might befall. Yet they 
seem to have held up their courage and spirits wonderfully 
well, and to have kept the hearts of the children alive with 
mirth and sport at moments of the utmost peril. They were 
carried off to the wild rugged regions of the Indian Caucasus, 
under the charge of one of Akbar Khan's soldiers of fortune. 
This man had begun to suspect that things were well-nigh 
hopeless with Akbar Khan. He was induced to enter into an 
agreement with the prisoners securing him a large reward, 
and a pension for life, if he enabled them to escape. He ac- 
cordingly declared that he renounced his allegiance to Akbar 
Khan ; all the more readily, seeing that news came in of the 
chiefs total defeat and flight, no one knew whither. The 
prisoners and their escort, lately their gaoler and guards, set 
forth on their way to General Pollock's camp. On their way 
they met the English parties sent out to seek for them. 

There is a very different ending to the episode of the 
English captives in Bokhara. Colonel Stoddart, who had been 
sent to the Persian camp in the beginning of all these events 
to insist that Persia must desist from the siege of Herat, was 
sent subsequently on a mission to the Ameer of Bokhara. 
The Ameer threw Stoddart into prison. Captain Conolly un- 
dertook to endeavour to effect the liberation of Stoddart, but 
could only succeed in sharing his sufferings, and at last his fate. 
Nothing was done to obtain their release beyond diplomatic 
efforts, and appeals to the magnanimity of the Ameer which 
had not any particular effect. Dr. Wolff, the celebrated traveller 
and missionary, afterwards undertook an expedition of his own 
in the hope of saving the unfortunate captives ; but he only 
reached Bokhara in time to hear that they had been put to death. 



ch. v. PEEL'S ADMINISTRATION. 57 

The moment and actual manner of their death cannot be 
known to positive certainty, but there is little doubt they were 
executed on the same day by the orders of the Ameer. 

On October 1, 1842, exactly four years since Lord Auck- 
land's proclamation announcing and justifying the intervention 
to restore Shah Soojah, Lord Ellenborough issued another 
proclamation announcing the complete failure and the revoca- 
tion of the policy of his predecessor. Lord Ellenborough 
declared that ' to force a sovereign upon a reluctant people 
would be as inconsistent with the policy as it is with the prin- 
ciples of the British Government ; ' that therefore they would 
recognise any Government approved by the Afghans themselves ; 
that the British arms would be withdrawn from Afghan- 
istan, and that the Government of India would remain ' con- 
tent with the limit nature appears to have assigned to its 
empire.' Dost Mahomed was released from his captivity, and 
before long was ruler of Cabul once again. Thus ended the 
story of our expedition to reorganise the internal condition of 
Afghanistan. 



CHAPTER V. 

peel's administration. 

• The year 1843,' said O'Connell, ' is and shall be the great 
Repeal year.' In the year 1843, at all events, O'Connell was 
by far the most prominent politician in these countries who 
had never been in office. O'Connell was a thorough Celt. 
He represented all the impulsiveness, the quick-changing 
emotions, the passionate, exaggerated loves and hatreds, the 
heedlessness of statement, the tendency to confound impres- 
sions with facts, the ebullient humour — all the other qualities 
that are especially characteristic of the Celt. As the orator 
of a popular assembly, as the orator of a monster meeting, he 
probably never had an equal in these countries. He had 
many of the physical endowments that are especially favour- 
able to success in such a sphere. He had a herculean frame, 
a stately presence, a face capable of expressing easily and 
effectively the most rapid alternations of mood, and a voice 
which all hearers admit to have been almost unrivalled for 
strength and sweetness. Its power, its pathos, its passion, its 
music have been described in words of positive rapture by 
3* 



58 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. v. 

men who detested O'Connell, and who would rather if they 
could have denied to him any claim on public attention, even 
in the matter of voice. He spoke without studied preparation, 
and of course had all the defects of such a style. He fell 
into repetition and into carelessness of construction ; he was 
hurried away into exaggeration and sometimes into mere 
bombast. But he had all the peculiar success, too, which 
rewards the orator who can speak without preparation. He 
always spoke right to the hearts of his hearers. He entered, 
the House of Commons when he was nearly fifty-four years of 
age. Most persons supposed that the style of speaking he 
had formed, first in addressing juries, and next in rousing 
Irish mobs, must cause his failure when he came to appeal to 
the unsympathetic and fastidious House of Commons. But 
it is certain that O'Connell became one of the most successful 
Parliamentary orators of his time. 

He had borne the leading part in carrying Catholic Eman- 
cipation. It must in a short time have been carried if 
O'Connell had never lived. But it was carried just then by 
virtue of O'ConneU's bold agitation. O'Connell and the Irish 
people saw that Catholic Emancipation had been yielded to 
pressure rather than to justice ; it is not wonderful if they 
thought that pressure might prevail as well in the matter of 
Eepeal. Nor is there any reason to doubt that O'Connell 
himself believed in the possibility of accomplishing his purpose. 
"We are apt now to think of the Union between England and 
Ireland as of time-honoured endurance. It had been scarcely 
thirty years in existence when O'Connell entered Parlia- 
ment. To O'Connell it appeared simply as a modern innova- 
tion which had nothing to be said for it except that a majority 
of Englishmen had by threats and bribery forced it on a 
majority of Irishmen. He perceived the possibility of forming 
a powerful party in Parliament, which would be free to co- 
operate with all English parties without coalescing with any, 
and might thus turn the balance of factions and decide the 
fate of Ministries. He believed that under a constitutional 
Government the will of four-fifths of a nation, if peacefully, 
perseveringly and energetically expressed, must sooner or 
later be triumphant. 

In many respects O'Connell differed from more modern 
Irish Nationalists. He was a thorough Liberal. He was a 
devoted opponent of negro slavery ; he was a staunch Free 
Trader ; he was a friend of popular education ; he was an 



ch. v. PEEVS ADMINISTRATION. 59 

enemy to all excess ; lie was opposed to strikes ; he was an 
advocate of religious equality everywhere. He preached the 
doctrine of constitutional agitation strictly, and declared that 
no political Reform was worth the shedding of one drop of 
blood. It may be asked how it came about that with all these 
excellent attributes, which all critics now allow to him, 
O'Connell was so detested by the vast majority of the English 
people. One reason undoubtedly is that O'Connell delibe- 
rately revived and worked up for his political purposes the 
almost extinct national hatreds of Celt and Saxon. As a 
phrase of political controversy, he may be said to have 
invented the word ' Saxon.' ^In the common opinion of 
Englishmen, all the evils of Ireland, all the troubles attach- 
ing to the connection between the two countries, had arisen 
from this unmitigated, rankling hatred of Celt for Saxon. 
Yet O'Connell was in no sense a revolutionist. Of the Irish 
rebels of '98 he spoke with as savage an intolerance as the 
narrowest English Tories could show in speaking of himself. 
The Tones, and Emmets, and Fitzgeralds, whom so many of 
the Irish people adored, were in O'Connell's eyes, and in his 
words, only * a gang of miscreants.' His theory and his 
policy were that Ireland was to be saved by a dictatorship 
entrusted to himself. 

He had a Parliamentary system by means of which he 
proposed to approach more directly the question of Repeal of 
the Union. He got seats in the House of Commons for a 
number of his sons, his nephews, and his sworn retainers. 
He had an almost supreme control over the Irish consti- 
tuencies, and whenever a vacancy took place he sent down 
a Repeal candidate to contest it. He always inculcated and 
insisted on the necessity of order and peace. Indeed, as he 
proposed to carry on his agitation altogether by the help of 
the bishops and the priests, it was not possible for him, even 
were he so inclined, to conduct it on any other than peaceful 
principles. * The man who commits a crime gives strength 
to the enemy,' was a maxim which he was never weary of 
impressing upon his followers. The Temperance movement 
set on foot with such remarkable and sudden success by 
Father Mathew was at once turned to account by O'Connell. 
He called upon his followers to join it, and was always boast- 
ing of his ' noble army of Teetotalers.' He started that 
system of agitation by monster meeting which has since his 
time been regularly established among us as a principal 



60 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. v« 

part of all political organisation for a definite purpose. 
He founded in Dublin a Repeal Association which met 
on Burgh Quay, in a place which he styled Conciliation 
Hall. The famous monster meetings were usually held on a 
Sunday, on some open spot, mostly selected for its historic 
fame, and with all the picturesque surroundings of hill and 
stream. From the dawn of the summer day the Eepealers 
were thronging to the scene of the meeting. They came 
from all parts of the neighbouring country for miles and 
miles. They were commonly marshalled and guided by their 
parish priests. They all attended the services of their Church 
before the meeting began. 

O'Connell himself, it is needless to say, was always the 
great orator of the day. His magnificent voice enabled him 
to do what no genius and no eloquence less aptly endowed 
could have done. He could send his lightest word thrilling 
to the extreme of the vast concourse of people whom he 
desired to move. He swayed them with the magic of an 
absolute control. He understood all the moods of his people ; 
to address himself to them came naturally to him. He made 
them roar with laughter ; he made them weep ; he made 
them thrill with indignation. As the shadow runs over a 
field, so the impression of his varying eloquence ran over the 
assemblage. He commanded the emotions of his hearers as 
a consummate conductor sways the energies of his orchestra. 

The crowds who attended the monster meetings came in a 
sort of military order and with a certain parade of military 
discipline. At the meeting held on the Hill of Tara, where 
O'Connell stood beside the stone said to have been used for 
the coronation of the ancient monarchs of Ireland, it is 
declared on the authority of careful and unsympathetic wit- 
nesses that a quarter of a million of people must have been 
present. The Government naturally felt that there was a very 
considerable danger in the massing together of such vast 
crowds of men in something like military array and under the 
absolute leadership of one man, who openly avowed that he had 
called them together to show England what was the strength 
her statesmen would have to fear if they continued to deny 
Repeal to his demand. The Government at last resolved to 
interfere. A meeting was announced to be held at Clontarf 
on Sunday, October 8, 1843. Clontarf is near Dublin, and is 
famous in Irish history as the scene of a great victory of the 
Irish over their Danish invaders. It was intended that this 



CH. V. PEEL'S ADMINISTRATION. 61 

meeting should surpass in numbers and in earnestness the 
assemblage at Tara. On the very day before the 8th the Lord- 
Lieutenant issued a proclamation prohibiting the meeting as 
* calculated to excite reasonable and well-grounded apprehen- 
sion ' in that its object was * to accomplish alterations in the 
laws and constitution of the realm by intimidation and the 
demonstration of physical force.' O'Connell's power over the 
people was never shown more effectively than in the control 
which at that critical moment he was still able to exercise. 
O'Connell declared that the orders of the Lord-Lieutenant 
must be obeyed ; that the meeting must not take place ; and 
that the people must return to their homes. The * uncrowned 
king,' as some of his admirers loved to call him, was obeyed, 
and no meeting was held. 

From that moment, however, the great power of the Eepeal 
agitation was gone. It was now made clear that he did not 
intend to have resort to force. The young and fiery followers 
of the great agitator renounced all faith in him. All the 
imposing demonstrations of physical strength lost their value 
when it was made positively known that they were only 
demonstrations, and that nothing was ever to come of them. 

The Government at once proceeded to the prosecution of 
O'Connell and some of his principal associates. They were 
charged with conspiring to raise and excite disaffection among 
her Majesty's subjects, to excite them to hatred and contempt 
of the Government and Constitution of the realm. The jury 
found O'Connell guilty along with most of his associates, and 
he was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment and a fine 
of 2,00QZ. The others received lighter sentences. O'Connell 
appealed to the House of Lords against the sentence. In the 
meantime he issued a proclamation to the Irish people com- 
manding them to keep perfectly quiet and not to commit any 
offence against the law. ' Every man,' said one of his pro- 
clamations, * who is guilty of the slightest breach of the peace 
is an enemy of me and of Ireland.' The Irish people took 
him at his word and remained perfectly quiet. 

O'Connell and his principal associates were committed to 
Richmond Prison, in Dublin. The trial had been delayed in 
various ways, and the sentence was not pronounced until May 
24, 1844. The appeal to the House of Lords was heard in 
the following September, the judgment was reversed, and 
O'Connell and his associates were set at liberty. There was all 
manner of national rejoicing when the decision of the House 



62 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. en. v. 

of Lords set O'Connell and his fellow-prisoners free. There 
were illuminations and banquets and meetings and triumphal 
processions, renewed declarations of allegiance to the great 
leader, and renewed protestations on his part that Repeal was 
coming. But his reign was over. His health broke down 
more and more every day. He became seized with a profound 
melancholy. Only one desire seemed left to him, the desire 
to close his stormy career in Eome. He longed to He down 
in the shadow of the dome of St. Peter's and rest there, and 
there die. His youth had been wild in more ways than one, 
and he had long been under the influence of a profound 
penitence. He had killed a man in a duel, and was through 
all his after life haunted by regret for the deed, although it 
was really forced on him, and he had acted only as any other 
man of his time would have acted in such conditions. But 
now in his old and sinking days all the errors of his youth and 
his strong manhood came back upon him, and he longed to 
steep the painful memories in the sacred influences of Borne. 
He hurried to Italy. He reached Genoa. His strength 
wholly failed him there, and he died, still far from Borne, on 
May 15, 1847. 

Some important steps in the progress of what may be de- 
scribed as social legislation are part of the history of Peel's 
Government. The Act of Parliament which prohibited abso- 
lutely the employment of women and girls in mines and 
collieries was rendered unavoidable by the fearful exposures 
made through the instrumentality of a Commission appointed 
to inquire into the whole subject. This Commission was 
appointed on the motion of the then Lord Ashley, smce 
better known as the Earl of Shaftesbury, a man who during 
the whole of a long career has always devoted himself to the 
task of brightening the lives and lightening the burthens of 
the working classes and the poor. In some of the coal mines 
women were literally employed as beasts of burden. Lord 
Ashley had the happiness and the honour of putting a stop to 
this infamous sort of labour for ever by the Act of 1842, which 
declared that, after a certain limited period, no woman or 
girl whatever should be employed in mines and collieries. 

Lord Ashley was less completely successful in his endea- 
vour to secure a ten hours' limitation for the daily labour of 
women and young persons in factories. By a vigorous annual 
agitation on the general subject of factory labour, he brought 
the Government up to the point of undertaking legislation on 



CH. V. PEELS ADMINISTRATION, 63 

the subject. They first introduced a bill which combined a 
limitation of the labour of children in factories with a plan for 
compulsory education among the children. Afterwards the 
Government brought in another bill, which became in the end 
the Factories Act of 1844. It was during the passing of this 
measure that Lord Ashley tried unsuccessfully to introduce 
his ten hours' limit. The bill diminished the working hours 
of children under thirteen years of age, and fixed them at six 
and a half hours each day ; extended somewhat the time 
during which they were to be under daily instruction, and did 
a good many other useful and wholesome things. The prin- 
ciple of legislative interference to protect youthful workers in 
factories had been already established by the Act of 1833 ; and 
Lord Ashley's agitation only obtained for it a somewhat ex- 
tended application. It has since that time again and again 
received further extension. 

Many other things done by Sir Kobert Peel's Government 
aroused bitter controversy and agitation. There was, for ex- 
ample, the grant to the Koman Catholic College of Maynooth, 
a college for the education specially of young men who sought 
to enter the ranks of the priesthood. The grant was not a new 
thing. Since before the Act of Union a grant had been made 
for the college. The Government of Sir Eobert Peel only pro- 
posed to make that which was insufficient sufficient ; to enable 
the college to be kept in repair and to accomplish the purpose 
for which it was founded. Yet the Ministerial proposition 
called up a very tempest of clamorous bigotry all over the 
country. Peel carried his measure, although nearly half his 
own party in the House of Commons voted against it on the 
second reading. 

There was objection within the Ministry, as well as without, 
to the Maynooth grant. Mr. Gladstone, who had been doing 
admirable work, first as Vice-President, and afterwards as 
President, of the Board of Trade, resigned his office because of 
this proposal. He acted, perhaps, with a too sensitive chivalry. 
He had written a work on the relations of Church and State, 
and he did not think the views expressed in that book left him 
free to co-operate in the Ministerial measure. Some staid 
politicians were shocked, many smiled, not a few sneered. 
The public in general applauded the spirit of disinterestedness 
which dictated the young statesman's act. 

Mr. Gladstone, however, supported by voice and vote the 
Queen's Colleges scheme, another of Peel's measures which 



64 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. v. 

aroused much clamour. The proposal of the Government was 
to establish in Ireland three colleges, one in Cork, the second 
in Belfast, and the third in Galway, and to affiliate these to a 
new university to be called the ' Queen's University in Ireland.' 
The teaching in these colleges was to be purely secular. No- 
thing could be more admirable than the intentions of Peel and 
his colleagues. Peel carried his measure ; but from both sides 
of the House and from the extreme party in each Church came 
an equally vigorous denunciation of the proposal to separate 
secular from religious education. 

One small instalment of justice to a much injured and long 
suffering religious body was accomplished without any trouble 
by Sir Kobert Peel's Government. This was the bill for re- 
moving the test by which Jews were excluded from certain 
municipal offices. A Jew might be high sheriff of a county, 
or Sheriff of London, but, with an inconsistency which wa3 
as ridiculous as it was narrow-minded, he was prevented from 
becoming a mayor, an alderman, or even a member of the 
Common Council. The oath which had to be taken included 
the words, '■ on the true faith of a Christian.' Lord Lyndhurst, 
the Lord Chancellor, introduced a measure to get rid of this 
absurd anomaly ; and the House of Lords, which had firmly re- 
jected similar proposals of relief before, passed it without any 
difficulty. It was of course passed by the House of Commons, 
which had done its best to introduce the reform in previous 
sessions, and without success. 

The Bank Charter Act, separating the issue from the bank- 
ing department of the Bank of England, limiting the issue of 
notes to a fixed amount of securities, requiring the whole 
of the further circulation to be on a basis of bullion, and pro- 
hibiting the formation of any new banks of issue, is a charac- 
teristic and an important measure of Peel's Government. To 
Peel, too, we owe the establishment of the income tax on its 
present basis — a doubtful boon. The copyright question was 
at least advanced a stage. Eailways were regulated. The 
railway mania and railway panic also belong to this active 
period. The country went wild with railway speculation. 
The vulgar and flashy successes of one or two lucky adventurers 
turned the heads of the whole community. For a time it 
seemed to be a national article of faith that the capacity of the 
country to absorb new railway schemes and make them profit- 
able was unlimited, and that to make a fortune one had only 
to take shares in anything. 



ch. v. PEEL'S ADMINISTRATION. 65 

An odd feature of the time was the outbreak of what were 
called the Eebecca riots in Wales. These riots arose out of the 
anger and impatience of the people at the great increase of toll- 
bars and tolls on the public roads. Some one, it was supposed, 
had hit upon a passage in Genesis which supplied a motto for 
their grievance and their complaint. * And they blessed Ke- 
bekah, and said unto her ... let thy seed possess the gate of 
those which hate them.' They set about accordingly to possess 
very effectually the gates of those which hated them. Mobs, 
led by men in women's clothes, assembled every night, de- 
stroyed turnpikes, and dispersed. Blood was shed in conflicts 
with police and soldiers. At last the Government succeeded 
in putting down the riots, and had the wisdom to appoint a 
Commission to inquire into the cause of so much disturbance ; 
and the Commission, as will readily be imagined, found that 
there were genuine grievances at the bottom of the popular 
excitement. The farmers and the labourers were poor ; the 
tolls were seriously oppressive. The Government dealt lightly 
with most of the rioters who had been captured, and intro- 
duced measures which removed the most serious grievances. 

Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, brought himself 
and the Government into some trouble by authorising the Post 
Office to open some of the letters of Joseph Mazzini, the Italian 
exile. The public excitement was at first very great ; but it soon 
subsided. The reports of Parliamentary committees appointed 
by the two Houses showed that all Governments had exercised 
the right, but naturally with decreasing frequency and greater 
caution of late years ; and that there was no chance now of its 
being seriously abused. One remark it is right to make. An 
exile is sheltered in a country like England on the assumption 
that he does not involve her in responsibility and danger by 
using her protection as a shield behind which to contrive plots 
and organise insurrections against foreign Governments. It is 
certain that Mazzini did make use of the shelter England gave 
him for such a purpose. It would in the end be to the heavy 
injury of all fugitives from despotic rule if to shelter them 
brought such consequences on the countries that offered them 
a home. 

The Peel Administration had wars of its own. Scinde was 
annexed by Lord Ellenborough in consequence of the disputes 
which had arisen between us and the Ameers, whom we accused 
of having broken faith with us. Peel and his colleagues ac- 
cepted the annexation. None of them liked it ; but none saw 



66 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. V. 

how it could be undone. Later on the Sikhs invaded our ter- 
ritory by crossing the Sutlej in great force. Sir Hugh Gough, 
afterwards Lord Gough, fought several fierce battles with them 
before he could conquer them ; and even then they were only 
conquered for the time. 

We were at one moment apparently on the very verge of 
whatmust have proved a far more serious war muchnearer home, 
in consequence of the dispute that arose between this country 
and France about Tahiti and Queen Pomare. Queen Pomare 
was sovereign of the island of Tahiti, in the South Pacific, the 
Otaheite of Captain Cook. She had been induced or compelled 
to put herself and her dominion under the protection of France ; 
a step which was highly displeasing to her subjects. Some ill- 
feeling towards the French residents of the island was shown ; 
and the French admiral, who had induced or compelled the 
queen to put herself under French protection, now suddenly 
appeared off the coast, and called on her to hoist the French 
flag above her own. She refused ; and he instantly effected a 
landing on the island, pulled down her flag, raised that of 
France in its place, and proclaimed that the island was French 
territory. His act was at once disavowed by the French 
Government. But Queen Pomare had appealed to the Queen 
of England for assistance. While the more hot-headed on both 
sides of the English Channel were snarling at each other, the 
difficulty was immensely complicated by the French command- 
ant's seizure of a missionary named Pritchard, who had been 
our consul in the island up to the deposition of Pomare. Prit- 
chard was flung into prison, and only released to be expelled 
from the island. He came home to England with his story ; 
and his arrival was the signal for an outburst of indignation 
all over the country. In the end the French Government 
agreed to compensate Pritchard for his sufferings and losses. 
Queen Pomare was nominally restored to power, but the French 
protection proved as stringent as if it were a sovereign rule. 
She might as well have pulled down her flag for all the sovereign 
right it secured to her. She died thirty-four years after, and 
her death recalled to the memory of the English public the long- 
forgotten fact she had once so nearly been the cause of a war 
between England and France. 

The Ashburton Treaty and the Oregon Treaty belong alike 
to the history of Peel's Administration. The Ashburton Treaty 
bears date August 9, 1842, and arranges finally the north-west- 
ern boundary between the British Provinces of North America 



CH. v. FEEUS ADMINISTRATION. 67 

and the United States. More than once the dispute about the 
boundary line in the Oregon region had very nearly become an 
occasion for war between England and the United States. On 
June 15, 1846, the Oregon Treaty settled the question for that 
time at least. Vancouver's Island remained to Great Britian, and 
the free navigation of the Columbia Eiver was secured. The 
question came up again for discussion in 1871, and was finally 
settled by the arbitration of the Emperor of Germany. 

During Peel's time we catch a last glimpse of the famous 
Arctic navigator, Sir John Franklin. He sailed on the expe- 
dition which was doomed to be his last, on May 26, 1845, with 
his two vessels, "Erebus and Terror, Not much more is heard 
of him as among the living. 



CHAPTEE VI. 

THE ANTI-CORN LAW LEAGUE. 

The famous Corn Law of 1815 was a copy of the Corn Law 
of 1670. The former measure imposed a duty on the impor- 
tation of foreign grain which amounted to prohibition. 
Wheat might be exported upon the payment of one shilling 
per quarter Customs duty ; but importation was practically 
prohibited until the price of wheat had reached eighty 
shillings a quarter. The Corn Law of 1815 was hurried 
through Parliament, absolutely closing the ports against the 
importation of foreign grain until the price of our home- 
grown grain had reached the magic figure of eighty shillings 
a quarter. It was hurried through, despite the most earnest 
petitions from the commercial and manufacturing classes. A 
great deal of popular disturbance attended the passing of the 
measure. There were riots in London, and in many parts of 
the country. After the Corn Law of 1815, thus ominously 
introduced, there were Sliding Scale Acts, having for their busi- 
ness to establish a varying system of duty, so that, according 
as the price of home-produced wheat rose to a certain height, 
the duty on imported wheat sank in proportion. The 
principle of all these measures was the same. It was 
founded on the assumption that the corn grew for the benefit 
of the grower first of all ; and that until he had been secured 
in a handsome profit the public at large had no right to any 



68 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. vi. 

reduction in the cost of food. When the harvest was ft good 
one, and the golden grain was plenty, then the soul of the 
grower was afraid, and he called out to Parliament to protect 
him against the calamity of having to sell his corn any 
cheaper than in years of famine. He did not see all the 
time that if the prosperity of the country in general was 
enhanced, he too must come to benefit by it. , 

A movement against the Corn Laws began in London. 
An Anti-Corn Law Association on a small scale was formed. 
Its list of members bore the names of more than twenty 
members of Parliament, and for a time the society had a look 
of vigour about it. It came to nothing, however. London 
has never been found an effective nursery of agitation. It 
has hardly ever made or represented thoroughly the public 
Opinion of England during any great crisis. A new centre of 
operations had to be sought, and in the year 1838 a meeting 
was held in Manchester to consider measures necessary to be 
adopted for bringing about the complete repeal of the obnoxious 
Laws. The Manchester Chamber of Commerce adopted a 
petition to Parliament against the Corn Laws. The Anti- 
Corn Law agitation had been fairly launched. From that 
time it grew and grew in importance and strength. Meetings 
were held in various towns of England and Scotland. Associa- 
tions were formed everywhere to co-operate with the movement 
which had its head-quarters in Manchester. 

The nominal leader of the Free Trade party in Parliament 
was for many years Mr. Charles Villiers, a man of aristocratic 
family and surroundings, of remarkable ability, and of the 
steadiest fidelity to the cause he had undertaken. Mr. Villiers 
brought forward for several successive sessions in the 
House of Commons a motion in favour of the total repeal of 
the Corn Laws. His eloquence and argumentative power 
served the great purpose of drawing the attention of the 
country to the whole question, and making converts to the 
principle he advocated. But Mr. Villiers might have gone on 
for all his life dividing the House of Commons on the question 
of Free Trade, without getting much nearer his object, h it 
were not for the manner in which the cause was taken up by 
the country, and more particularly by the great manufacturing 
towns of the North. Until the passing of Lord Grey's 
Reform Bill these towns had no representation in Parliament. 
They seemed destined after that event to make up for their 
long exclusion from representative influence by taking the 



CH. vi. THE ANTI-CORN LAW LEAGUE, 69 

government of the country into their own hands. Manchester, 
Birmingham, and Leeds are no whit less important to the life 
of the nation now than they were before Free Trade. But 
their supremacy does not exist now as it did then. At that 
time it was town against country ; Manchester representing the 
town, and the whole Conservative (at one period almost the 
whole landowning) body representing the country. With the 
Manchester school, as it was called, began a new kind of 
popular agitation. Up to that time agitation meant appeal 
to passion, and lived by provoking passion. The Manchester 
school introduced the agitation which appealed to reason and 
argument only ; which stirred men's hearts with figures of 
arithmetic rather than figures of speech, and which converted 
mob meetings to political economy. 

The real leader of the movement was Mr. Eichard Cobden. 
Mr. Cobden was a man belonging to the yeoman class. 
He had received but a moderate education. His father 
dying while the great Free Trader was still young, Eichard 
Cobden was taken in charge by an uncle, who had a whole- 
sale warehouse in the City of London, and who gave him 
employment there. Cobden afterwards became a partner in a 
Manchester printed cotton factory ; and he travelled occasion- 
ally on the commercial business of this establishment. He 
had a great liking for travel ; but not by any means as the 
ordinary tourist travels ; the interest of Cobden was not in 
scenery, or in art, or in ruins, but in men. He studied the 
condition of countries with a view to the manner in which it 
affected the men and women of the present, and through them 
was likely to affect the future. On everything that he saw he 
turned a quick and intelligent eye ; and he saw for himself and 
thought for himself. Wherever he went, he wanted to learn 
something. He had in abundance that peculiar faculty which 
some great men of widely different stamp from him and from 
each other have possessed, the faculty which exacts from 
everyone with whom the owner comes into contact some con- 
tribution to his stock of information and to his advantage. 
Cobden could learn something from everybody. He travelled 
very widely, for a time when travelling was more difficult work 
than it is at present. He made himself familiar with most of 
the countries of Europe, with many parts of the East, and what 
was then a rarer accomplishment, with the United States and 
Canada. He studied these countries and visited many of them 
again to compare early with later impressions. When he was 



70 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIME.S. ch. vi. 

about thirty years of age lie began to acquire a certain reputa- 
tion as the author of pamphlets directed against some of the 
pet doctrines of old-fashioned statesmanship ; the balance of 
power in Europe ; the necessity of maintaining a State 
Church in Ireland ; the importance of allowing no European 
quarrel to go on without England's intervention ; and similar 
dogmas. The tongue, however, was his best weapon. If 
oratory were a business and not an art — that is, if its test were 
its success rather than its form — then it might be contended 
reasonably enough that Mr. Cobden was one of the greatest 
orators England has ever known. Nothing could exceed the 
persuasiveness of his style. His manner was simple, sweet 
and earnest. It was transparently sincere. The light of its 
convictions shone all through it. It aimed at the reason and 
the judgment of the listener, and seemed to be convincing him 
to his own interest against his prejudices. Cobden' s style was 
almost exclusively conversational, but he had a clear, well- 
toned voice, with a quiet, unassuming power in it which 
enabled him to make his words heard distinctly and without 
effort all through the great meetings he had often to address. 
His speeches were full of variety. He illustrated every argu- 
ment by something drawn from his personal observation or 
from reading, and his illustrations were always striking, 
appropriate and interesting. He had a large amount of bright 
and winning humour, and he spoke the simplest and purest 
English. He never used an unnecessary sentence or failed for 
a single moment to make his meaning clear. Many strong 
opponents of Mr. Cobden's opinions confessed even during his 
lifetime that they sometimes found with dismay their most 
cherished convictions crumbling away beneath his flow of easy 
argument. In the stormy times of national passion Mr. Cob- 
den was less powerful. The apostle of common sense and fair 
dealing, he had no sympathy with the passions of men ; he 
did not understand them; they passed for nothing in his 
calculations. His judgment of men and of nations was based 
far too much on his knowledge of his own motives and cha- 
racter. He knew that in any given case he could always trust 
himself to act the part of a just and prudent man ; and he 
assumed that all the world could be governed by the rules of 
prudence and of equity. He cared little or nothing for mere 
sentiments. Even where these had their root in some human 
tendency that was noble in itself, he did not reverence them if 
they seemed to stand in the way of men's acting peacefully 



CH. vi. THE ANTI-CORN LAW LEAGUE. 71 

and prudently. Thus lie never represented more than half 
the English character. He was always out of sympathy with 
his countrymen on some great political question. But he 
seemed as if he were designed by nature to conduct to such 
success an agitation as that against the Corn Laws. 

Mr. Cobden found some colleagues who were worthy of him. 
His chief companion in the campaign was Mr. Bright. It is 
doubtful whether English public life has ever produced a man 
who possessed more of the qualifications of a great orator than 
Mr. Bright. He had a commanding presence, a massive figure, 
a large head, a handsome and expressive face. His voice was 
powerful, resonant, clear, with a peculiar vibration in it which 
leant unspeakable effect to any passages of pathos or of scorn. 
His style of speaking was pure to austerity ; it was stripped 
of all superfluous ornament. It never gushed or foamed. It 
never allowed itself to be mastered by passion. The first 
peculiarity that struck the listener was its superb self-restraint. 
The orator at his most powerful passages appeared as if he 
were rather keeping in his strength than taxing it with effort. 
His voice was for the most part calm and measured ; he hardly 
ever indulged in much gesticulation. He never, under the 
pressure of whatever emotion, shouted or stormed. The fire 
of his eloquence was a white heat, intense, consuming, but 
never sparkling or sputtering. He had an admirable gift of 
humour and a keen ironical power. He had read few books, 
but of those he read he was a master. The English Bible and 
Milton were his chief studies. Bright was a man of the 
middle class. His family were Quakers of a somewhat austere 
mould. They were manufacturers of carpets in Bochdale, 
Lancashire, and had made considerable money in their business. 

There was something positively romantic about the mutual 
attachment of these two men, who worked together in the 
closest brotherhood, who loved each other as not all brothers 
do, who were associated so closely in the public mind that 
until Cobden' s death the name of one was scarcely ever men- 
tioned without that of the other. Each led a noble life ; each 
was in his own way a man of genius ; each was simple 
and strong. Bivalry between them would have been impossi- 
ble, although they were every day being compared and con- 
trasted by both friendly and unfriendly critics. Their gifts 
were admirably suited to make them powerful allies. Each 
had something that the other wanted. Bright had not 
Cobden's winning persuasiveness nor his surprising ease and 



72 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. VI. 

force of argument. But Cobden had not anything like his 
companion's oratorical power. He had not the tones of 
scorn, of pathos, of humour, and of passion. The two 
together made a genuine power in the House of Commons and 
on the platform. 

These men had many assistants and lieutenants well 
worthy to act with them and under them, such as Mr. W. J. 
Fox, for instance, a tJnitarian minister of great popularity and 
remarkable eloquence, and Mr. Milner Gibson, who had been 
a Tory. 

The League, however successful as it might be throughout 
the country, had its great work to do in Parliament. Even 
after the change made in favour of manufacturing and middle 
class interests by the Eeform Bill, the House of Commons 
was still composed, as to nine-tenths of its whole number, by 
representatives of the landlords. The entire House of Lords 
then was constituted of the owners of land. All tradition, all 
prestige, all the dignity of aristocratic institutions, seemed to 
be naturally arrayed against the new movement, conducted as 
it was by manufacturers and traders for the benefit seemingly 
oi trade and those whom it employed. The artisan population 
who might have been formidable as a disturbing element were 
on the whole rather against the Free Traders than for them. 
Nearly all the great official leaders had to be converted to the 
doctrines of Free Trade. 

The Anti-Corn Law agitation introduced a game of politics 
into England which astonished and considerably discomfited 
steady-going politicians. The League men did not profess to 
be bound by any indefeasible bond of allegiance to the Whig 
party. They were prepared to co-operate with any party 
whatever which would undertake to abolish the Corn Laws. 

It is a significant fact that the Anti-Corn Law League were 
not in the least discouraged by the accession of Sir Robert 
Peel to power. Their hopes seem rather to have gone up than 
gone down when the minister came into power whose adherents, 
unlike those of Lord John Russell, were absolutely against the 
very principle of Free Trade. It is certain that the League 
always regarded Sir Robert Peel as a Free Trader in heart ; as 
one who fully admitted the principle oi Free Trade, but who 
did not see his way just then to deprive the agricultural 
interest of the protection on which they had for so many years 
been allowed and encouraged to lean. 

The country party did not understand Sir Robert 



ch. vi. THE ANTI-CORN LAW LEAGUE. 73 

Peel as their opponents and his assuredly understood him. 
They did not at this time believe in the possibility of any 
change. Free Trade was to them little more than an abstrac- 
tion. They did not much care who preached it out of Parlia- 
ment. They were convinced that the state of things they 
saw around them when they were boys would continue to the 
end. Both parties in the House — that is to say, both of the 
parties from whom ministers were taken — alike set themselves 
against the introduction of any Free Trade measure. 

It would have been better if Sir Eobert Peel had devoted 
himself more directly to preparing the minds of his followers 
for the fact that protection for grain having ceased to be tenable 
as an economic principle would possibly some day have to be 
given up as a practice. He might have been able to show 
them, as the events have shown them since, that the intro- 
duction of free corn would be a blessing to the population of 
England in general, and would do nothing but good for the 
landed interest as well. The influence of Peel at that time, 
and indeed all through his administration up to the introduc- 
tion of his Free Trade measures, was limitless, so far as his 
party were concerned. He could have done anything with 
them. But Peel, to begin with, was a reserved, cold, somewhat 
awkward man. He was not effusive ; he did not pour out his 
emotions and reveal all his changes of opinion in bursts of 
confidence even to his habitual associates. He brooded over 
these things in his own mind; he gave such expression to 
them in open debate as any passing occasion seemed strictly 
to call for ; and he assumed perhaps that the gradual changes 
operating in his views when thus expressed were understood 
by his followers. Above all, it is probable that Peel himself 
did not see until almost the last moment that the time had 
actually come when the principle of Protection must give way 
to other and more weighty claims. 

We see how the two great parties of the State stood with 
regard to this question of Free Trade. The Whigs were 
steadily gravitating towards it. Their leaders did not quite 
see their way to accept it as a principle of practical states- 
manship, but it was evident that their acceptance of it was 
only a question of time, and of no long time. The leader of 
the Tory party was being drawn day by day more in the same 
direction. Both leaders, Eussell and Peel, had gone so iar as 
to admit the general principle of Free Trade. Peel had con- 
tended that grain was in England a necessary exception; 

4 



74 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. vi. 

Russell was not of opinion that the time had come when it 
could be treated otherwise than as an exception. The Free 
Trade party was daily growing more and more powerful with 
the country. This must soon have ended in one or other of 
the two great ruling parties forming an alliance with the Free 
Traders. But in the case of the Anti-Corn Law agitation, an 
event over which political parties had no control intervened to 
spur the intent of the Prime Minister. Mr. Bright many years 
after, when pronouncing the eulogy of his dead friend Cobden, 
described what happened in a fine sentence : * Famine itself, 
against which we had warred, joined us.' In the autumn of 
1845 the potato rot began in Ireland. 

The vast majority of the working population of Ireland were 
known to depend absolutely on the potato for subsistence. In 
the northern province, where the population were of Scotch ex- 
traction, the oatmeal, the brose of their ancestors, still supplied 
the staple of their food ; but in the southern and western pro- 
vinces a large proportion of the peasantry actually lived on the 
potato and the potato alone. In these districts whole generations 
grew up, lived, married, and passed away, without having ever 
tasted flesh meat. It was evident then that a failure in the 
potato crop would be equivalent to a famine. The news came 
in the autumn of 1845 that the long continuance of sunless 
wet and cold had imperilled, if not already destroyed, the 
food of a people. 

The Cabinet of Sir Robert Peel held hasty meetings 
closely following each other. People began to ask whether 
Parliament was about to be called together, and whether 
the Government had resolved on a bold policy. The Anti- 
Corn Law League were clamouring for the opening of the 
ports. The Prime Minister himself was strongly in favour of 
such a course. The Duke of Wellington and Lord Stanley, 
however, opposed the idea of the opening of the ports, and 
the proposal fell through. The Cabinet merely resolved on 
appointing a Commission, consisting of the heads of depart- 
ments in Ireland, to take some steps to guard against a sudden 
outbreak of famine, and the thought of an autumnal session 
was abandoned. 

The great cry all through Ireland was for the opening 
of the ports. The Mansion House Relief Committee of 
Dublin issued a series of resolutions declaring that the potato 
disease was daily expanding more and more, and the document 
concluded with ft denunciation of the Ministry for not opening 



CH. VI. THE A NT I CORN LAW LEAGUE. 75 

the ports, or calling Parliament together before the usual time 
for its assembling. 

Two or three days after the issue of these resolutions 
Lord John Eussell wrote a letter from Edinburgh to his 
constituents, the electors of the City of London, announcing 
his unqualified conversion to the principles of the Anti-Corn 
Law League. The failure of the potato crop was of course 
the immediate occasion of this letter. As Peel himself said, 
the letter ' justified the conclusion that the Whig party was pre- 
pared to unite with the Anti-Corn Law League in demanding 
the total repeal of the Corn Laws. ' Peel would not consent now 
to propose simply an opening of the ports. It would seem, he 
thought, a mere submission to accept the minimum of the 
terms ordered by the Whig leader. Sir Eobert Peel therefore 
recommended to his Cabinet an early meeting of Parliament 
with the view of bringing forward some measure equivalent 
to a speedy Eepeal of the Corn Laws. 

The recommendation was wise. It was, indeed, indis- 
pensable. Yet neither Whigs nor Tories appear to have 
formed a judgment because of facts or principles, but only 
in deference to the political necessities of the hour. The 
potato rot inspired the writing of Lord John Kussell's letter ; 
and Lord John BusselTs letter inspired Sir Eobert Peel 
with the conviction that something must be done. Most of 
Peel's colleagues were inclined to, go with him this time. A 
Cabinet Council was held on November 25, almost immediately 
after the publication of Lord John Eussell' s letter. At that 
council Sir Eobert Peel recommended the summoning of 
Parliament with a view to instant measures to combat the 
famine in Ireland, but with a view also to some announcement 
of legislation intended to pave the way for the repeal of the 
Corn Laws. Lord Stanley and the Duke of Buccleuch inti- 
mated to the Prime Minister that they could not be parties to 
any measure involving the ultimate repeal of the Corn Laws. 
Sir Eobert Peel did not believe that he could carry out his 
project satisfactorily under such circumstances, and he there- 
fore hastened to tender his resignation to the Queen. 

Lord John Eussell was sent for from Edinburgh. His 
letter had without any such purpose on his part written him 
up as the man to take Sir Eobert Peel's place. Lord John 
Eussell came to London and did his best to cope with the 
many difficulties of the situation. His party were not very 
strong in the country, and they had not a majority in the House 



76 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. vt 

of Commons. Lord John Russell showed, even then, his 
characteristic courage. He resolved to form a Ministry with- 
out a Parliamentary majority. He was not however fated to 
try the ordeal. Lord Grey, who was a few months before 
Lord Howick, and who had just succeeded to the title of his 
father (the stately Charles Earl Grey, the pupil of Fox, and 
chief of the Cabinet which passed the Reform Bill and abolished 
slavery) — Lord Grey felt a strong objection to the foreign 
policy of Lord Palmerston, and these two could not get on in 
one Ministry as it was part of Lord John Russell's plan that 
they should do. 

Lord John Russell found it impossible to form a Ministry. 
He signified his failure to the Queen. Probably, having done 
the best he could, he was not particularly distressed to find 
that his efforts were ineffectual. The Queen had to send for 
Sir Robert Peel to Windsor and tell him that she must re- 
quire him to withdraw his resignation and to remain in her 
service. Sir Robert of course could only comply. The Duke 
of Buccleuch withdrew his opposition to the policy which 
Peel was now to carry out ; but Lord Stanley remained firm. 
The place of the latter was taken, as Secretary of State for 
the Colonies, by Mr. Gladstone, who however curiously enough 
remained without a seat in Parliament during the eventful 
session that was now to come. Mr. Gladstone had sat for the 
borough of Newark, but that borough being under the influ- 
ence of the Duke of Newcastle, who had withdrawn his 
support from the Ministry, he did not invite re-election, but 
remained without a seat in the House of Commons for some 
months. Sir Robert Peel then, to use his own words, resumed 
power * with greater means of rendering public service than I 
should have had if I had not relinquished it.* He felt, he 
said, ' like a man restored to life after his funeral sermon had 
been preached.' 

Parliament was summoned to meet in January. In the mean- 
time it was easily seen how the Protectionists and the Tories of 
the extreme order generally would regard the proposals of Sir 
Robert Peel. Protectionist meetings were held in various 
parts of the country, and they were all but unanimous in con- 
demning by anticipation the policy of the restored Premier. 
Resolutions were passed at many of these meetings expressing 
an equal disbelief in the Prime Minister and in the famine. 
The utmost indignation was expressed at the idea of there being 
any famine in prospect which could cause any departure irom 



ch. vi. THE ANTI-CORN LAW LEAGUE, 77 

the principles which secured to the farmers a certain fixed 
price for their grain, or at least prevented the price from falling 
below what they considered a paying amount. 

Parliament met. The opening day was January 22, 1846. 
There are few scenes more animated and exciting than 
that presented by the House of Commons on some night when 
a great debate is expected, or when some momentous an- 
nouncement is to be made. A common thrill seems to tremble 
all through the assembly as a breath of wind runs across the 
sea. The House appears for the moment to be one body per-' 
vaded by one expectation. The Ministerial benches, the front 
benches of opposition, are occupied by the men of political 
renown and of historic name. The benches everywhere else are 
crowded to their utmost capacity. Members who cannot 
get seats — on such an occasion a goodly number — stand below 
the bar or have to dispose themselves along the side galleries. 
The celebrities are not confined to the Treasury benches or 
those of the leaders of opposition. Here and there, among 
the independent members and below the gangway on both 
sides, are seen men of influence and renown. The strangers* 
gallery, the Speaker's gallery on such a night are crowded to 
excess. The eye surveys the whole House and sees no vacant 
place. In the very hum of conversation that runs along the 
benches there is a tone of profound anxiety. The minister 
who has to face that House and make the announcement for 
which all are waiting in a most feverish anxiety is a man to 
be envied by the ambitious. 

The Prime Minister went into long and laboured explana- 
tions of the manner in which his mind had been brought into 
a change on the subject of Free Trade and Protection, and he 
gave exhaustive calculations to show that the reduction of 
duty was constantly followed by expansion of the revenue, and 
even a maintenance of high prices. The duties on glass, the 
duties on flax, the prices of salt pork and domestic lard, the 
contract price of salt beef for the navy — these and many 
other such topics were discussed at great length, and with 
elaborate fulness of detail, in the hearing of an eager House 
anxious only for that night to know whether or not the minister 
meant to introduce the principle of Free Trade. Peel, how- 
ever, made it clear enough that he had become a complete 
convert to the doctrines of the Manchester school, and that 
in his opinion the time had come when that protection he had 
taken office to maintain must for ever be abandoned. 



78 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch in, 

The explanation was over. The House of Commons were 
left rather to infer than to understand what the Government 
proposed to do. There appeared therefore nothing for it but to 
wait until the time should come for the formal announcement 
and the full discussion of the Government measures. Sud- 
denly, however, a new and striking figure intervened in the 
languishing debate, and filled the House of Commons with 
a fresh life. There is not often to be found in our Parliamen- 
tary history an example like this of a sudden turn given to a 
whole career by a timely speech. The member who rose to 
comment on the explanation of Sir Eobert Peel had been for 
many years in the House of Commons. This was his tenth 
session. He had spoken often in each session. He had made 
many bold attempts to win a name in Parliament, and 
hitherto his political career had been simply a failure. From 
the hour when he spoke this speech, it was one long, unbroken, 
brilliant success. 



CHAPTER VII. 

ME. DISKAELI. 

The speaker who rose into such sudden prominence and 
something like the position of a party leader was one of the 
most remarkable men the politics of the reign have produced. 
Mr. Disraeli entered the House of Commons as Conservative 
member for Maidstone in 1837. He was then about thirty- 
two years of age. He had previously made repeated and un- 
successful attempts to get a seat in Parliament. He began 
his political career as an advanced Liberal, and had described 
himself as one who desired to fight the battle of the people, and 
who was supported by neither of the aristocratic parties. He 
failed again and again, and apparently he began to think that 
it would be a wiser thing to look for the support of one or 
other of the aristocratic parties. He had before this given in- 
dications of remarkable literary capacity. His novel, ' Vivian 
Grey,' published when he was in his twenty-third year, was 
suffused with extravagance, affectation and mere animal spirits ; 
but it was full of the evidences of a fresh and brilliant ability. 
The son of a distinguished literary man, Mr. Disraeli had pro- 
bably at that time only a young literary man's notions of 
politics. It is not necessary to charge him with deliberate in- 



CH. vn. MR DISRAELI. 79 

consistency because from having been a Eadical of the most 
advanced views he became by an easy leap a romantic Tory. 
It is not likely that at the beginning of his career he had any 
very clear ideas in connection with the words Tory or Eadical. 
When young Disraeli found that advanced Eadicalism did not 
do much to get him into Parliament, he probably began to ask 
himself whether his Liberal convictions were so deeply rooted as 
to call for the sacrifice of a career. He thought the question 
over, and doubtless found himself crystallising fast into an 
advocate of the established order of things. 

No trace of the progress of conversion can be found in his 
speeches or his writings. It is not unreasonable to infer that 
he took up Eadicalism at the beginning because it looked the 
most picturesque and romantic thing to do, and that only as 
he found it fail to answer his personal object did it occur to 
him that he had after all more affinity with the cause of the 
country gentlemen. The reputation he had made for himself 
before his going into Parliament was of a nature rather calcu- 
lated to retard than to advance a political career. He was 
looked upon almost universally as an eccentric and audacious 
adventurer, who was kept from being dangerous by the affecta- 
tions and absurdities of his conduct. He dressed in the ex- 
tremest style of preposterous foppery ; he talked a blending of 
cynicism ani. sentiment ; he made the most reckless statements ; 
his boasting was almost outrageous ; his rhetoric of abuse was, 
even in that free-spoken time, astonishingly vigorous and un- 
restrained. Even then his literary efforts did not then receive 
anything like the appreciation they have obtained since. At 
that time they were regarded rather as audacious whimsicalities, 
the fantastic freaks of a clever youth, than as genuine works of 
a certain kind of art. Even when he did get into the House of 
Commons, his first experience there was little calculated to 
give him much hope of success. Eeading over his first 
speech now, it seems hard to understand why it should 
have excited so much laughter and derision ; why it should 
have called forth nothing but laughter and derision. It is a 
clever speech, full of point and odd conceits ; very like in style 
and structure many of the speeches which in later years won 
for the same orator the applause of the House of Commons. 
But Mr. Disraeli's reputation had preceded him into the House. 
The House was probably in a humour to find the speech 
ridiculous because the general impression was that the man 
himself was ridiculous. Mr. Disraeli's appearance, too, no 



«o A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. VII. 

doubt contributed something to the contemptuous opinion 
which was formed of him on his first attempt to adlress the 
assembly which he afterwards came to rule. He is de- 
scribed by an observer as having been ' attired in a bottle- 
green frock coat and a waistcoat of white, of the Dick 
Swiveller pattern, the front of which exhibited a network of 
glittering chains ; large fancy pattern pantaloons, and a black 
tie, above which no shirt collar was visible, completed the 
outward man. A countenance lividly pale, set out by a pair 
of intensely black eyes, and a broad but not very high fore- 
head, overhung by clustering ringlets of coal-black hair, which, 
combed away from the right temple, fell in bunches of well- 
oiled small ringlets over his left cheek.' His manner was 
intensely theatric ; his gestures were wild and extravagant. 
Mr. Disraeli made not merely a failure, but even a ludicrous 
failure. One who heard the debate thus describes the manner 
in which, baffled by the persistent laughter and other interrup- 
tions of the noisy House, the orator withdrew from the dis- 
cussion defeated but not discouraged. 'At last, losing 
his temper, which until now he had preserved in a wonderful 
manner, he paused in the midst of a sentence, and looking the 
Liberals indignantly in the face, raised his hands, and opening 
his mouth as widely as its dimensions would admit, said in a 
remarkably loud and almost terrific tone, " I have begun several 
times many things, and I have often succeeded at last ; ay, 
sir, and though I sit down now, the time will come when you 
will hear me." ' 

Disraeli was not in the least discouraged by his first 
failure. A few days after it he spoke again, and he spoke 
three or four times more during his first session. But he had 
earned some wisdom by rough experience, and he did not 
make his oratorical flights so long or so ambitious as that first 
attempt. Then he seemed after a while, as he grew more 
familiar with the House, to go in for being paradoxical ; for 
making himself always conspicuous ; for taking up positions 
and expounding political creeds which other men would have 
avoided. It is very difficult to get any clear idea of what his 
opinions were about this period of his career, if he had any 
political opinions at all. He spoke on subjects of which it 
was evident that he knew nothing, and sometimes he managed 
by the sheer force of a strong intelligence to discern the 
absurdity of economic sophistries which had baffled men of 
far greater experience, and which indeed, to judge from hia 



ch. vii. MR. DISRAELI. Si 

personal declarations and political conduct afterwards, he 
allowed before long to baffle and bewilder himself. More 
often, however, he talked with a grandiose and oracular 
vagueness which seemed to imply that he alone of all men 
saw into the very heart of the question, but that he, of all 
men, must not yet reveal what he saw. Mr. Disraeli was at 
one period of his career so affected that he positively affected 
affectation. Yet he was a man of undoubted genius ; he had 
a spirit that never quailed under stress of any circumstances, 
however disheartening. 

For some time Mr. Disraeli then seemed resolved to make 
himself remarkable — to be talked about. He succeeded 
admirably. He was talked about. All the political and 
satirical journals of the day had a great deal to say about 
him. He is not spoken of in terms of praise as a rule. 
Neither has he much praise to shower about him. Anyone 
who looks back to the political controversies of that time will 
be astounded at the language which Mr. Disraeli addresses to 
his opponents of the press, and which his opponents address 
to him. The duelling system survived then and for long 
after, and Mr. Disraeli always professed himself ready to 
sustain with his pistol anything that his lips might have 
given utterance to, even in the reckless heat of controversy. 
He kept himself well up to the level of his time in 
the calling of names and the swaggering. But he was 
making himself remarkable in political controversy as well. 
In the House of Commons he began to be regarded as a 
dangerous adversary in debate. He was wonderfully ready 
with retort and sarcasm. But during all the earlier part of 
his career he was thought of only as a free lance. He had 
praised Peel when Peel said something that suited him, or 
when to praise Peel seemed likely to wound someone else. 
But it was during the discussions on the abolition of the Corn 
Laws that he first rose to the fame of a great debater and a 
powerful Parliamentary orator. 

Hitherto he had wanted a cause to inspire and justify 
audacity, and on which to employ with effect his remarkable 
resources of sarcasm and rhetoric. Hitherto he had addressed 
an audience for the most part out of sympathy with him. 
Now he was about to become the spokesman of a large body 
of men who, chafing and almost choking with wrath, were 
not capable of speaking effectively for themselves. Mr. 
Disraeli did therefore the very wisest thing he could do when 
4* 



82 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. vn. 

lie launched at once into a savage personal attack upon Si* 
Piobert Peel. 

From that hour Mr. Disraeli was the real leader of the 
Tory squires ; from that moment his voice gave the word of 
command to the Tory party. Disraeli made his own career 
by the course he took on that memorable night, and he also 
made a new career for the Tory party. 

One immediate effect of the turn thus given by Disraeli's 
timely intervention in the debate was the formation of a 
Protection party in the House of Commons. The leadership 
of this perilous adventure was entrusted to Lord George 
Bentinck, a sporting nobleman of energetic character, great 
tenacity of purpose and conviction, and a not inconsiderable 
aptitude for politics which had hitherto had no opportunity 
for either exercising or displaying itself. Lord George 
Bentinck had sat in eight Parliaments without taking part in 
any great debate. When he was suddenly drawn into the 
leadership of the Protection party in the House of Commons, 
he gave himself up to it entirely. He had at first only 
joined the party as one of its organisers ; but he showed him- 
self in many respects well fitted for the leadership, and the 
choice of leaders was in any case very limited. "When once 
he had accepted the position he was unwearying in his 
attention to its duties ; and indeed up to the moment of 
his sudden and premature death he never allowed himself any 
relaxation from the cares it imposed on him. Bentinck's 
abilities were hardly even of the second class ; and the 
amount of knowledge which he brought to bear on the 
questions he discussed with so much earnestness and energy 
was often and of necessity little better than mere cram. But 
in Parliament the essential qualities of a leader are not great 
powers of intellect. A man of cool head, good temper, firm 
will, and capacity for appreciating the serviceable qualities of 
other men, may, always provided that he has high birth and 
great social influence, make a very successful leader, even 
though he be wanting altogether in the higher attributes of 
eloquence and statesmanship. Bentinck had patience, energy, 
good humour, and considerable appreciation of the characters 
of men. If he had a bad voice, and was a poor speaker, he at 
least always spoke in full faith, and was only the more neces- 
sary to his party because he could honestly continue to 
believe in the old doctrines, no matter what political economy 
and hard facts might say to the contrary. 



ch. vii. MR. DISRAELI. 83 

The secession was, therefore, in full course of organisation. 
On January 27 Sir Eobert Peel came forward to explain his 
financial policy. His object was to abandon the sliding scale 
altogether ; but for the present he intended to impose a duty of 
ten shillings a quarter on corn when the price of it was under 
forty-eight shillings a quarter ; to reduce that duty by one 
shilling for every shilling of rise in price until it reached fifty- 
three shillings a quarter, when the duty should fall to four 
shillings. This arrangement was, however, only to hold good 
for three years, at the end of which time protective duties on 
grain were to be wholly abandoned. Peel explained that he 
intended gradually to apply the principle of Free Trade to 
manufactures and every description of produce, bearing in 
mind the necessity of providing for the expenditure of the 
country, and of smoothing away some of the difficulties which 
a sudden withdrawal of protection might cause. The dif- 
ferential duties on sugar, which were professedly intended to 
protect the growers of free sugars against the competition of 
those who cultivated sugar by the use of slave labour, were to 
be diminished but not abolished. The duties on the importa- 
tion of foreign cattle were to be at once removed. 

The proposals of the Ministry did not wholly satisfy the 
professed Free Traders. These latter would have enforced, if 
they could, an immediate application of the principle without 
the interval of three years, and the devices and shifts which 
were to be put in operation during that middle time. But, of 
course, they had no idea of not taking what they could get. 

The third reading of the bill passed the House of Commons 
on May 15, by a majority of 98 votes. The bill was at once 
sent up to the House of Lords, and by means chiefly of the 
earnest advice of the Duke of Wellington, was carried through 
that House without much serious opposition. But June 25, 
the day when the bill was read for a third time in the House 
of Lords, was a memorable day in the Parliamentary annals of 
England. It saw the fall of the Ministry who had carried to 
success the greatest piece of legislation that had been intro- 
duced since Lord Grey's Eeform Bill. 

A Coercion Bill for Ireland was the measure which brought 
this catastrophe on the Government of Sir Robert Peel. 
While the Corn Bill was yet passing through the House of 
Commons the Government felt called upon, in consequence of 
the condition of crime and outrage in Ireland, to introduce a 
Coercion Bill. This placed them in a serious difficulty. All 



84 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. vil 

the Irish followers of O'Connell would of course oppose the 
coercion measure. The "Whigs when out of office have usually 
made it a rule to oppose coercion bills if they do not come 
accompanied with some promises of legislative reform and con- 
cession. The English Radical members, Mr. Cobden and his 
followers, were almost sure to oppose it. Under these circum- 
stances, it seemed probable enough that if the Protectionists 
joined with the other opponents of the Coercion Bill, the 
Government must be defeated. The temptation was too great. 
The fiercer Protectionists voted with the Free Traders, the 
"Whigs, and the Irish Catholic and Liberal members, and after 
a debate of much bitterness and passion, the division on the 
second reading of the Coercion Bill took place on Thursday, 
June 25, and the Ministry were left in a minority of 73. 
Borne eighty of the Protectionists followed Lord George 
Bentinck into the lobby to vote against the bill, and their 
votes settled the question. Chance had put within their grasp 
the means of vengeance, and they had seized it, and made 
successful use of it. The Peel Ministry had fallen in its very 
hour of triumph. 

Three days after Sir Eobert Peel announced his resignation 
of office. So great a success followed by so sudden and 
complete a fall is hardly recorded in the Parliamentary history 
of our modern times. Peel had crushed O'Connell and carried 
Free Trade, and O'Connell and the Protectionists had life 
enough yet to pull him down. He is as a conqueror who, 
having won the great victory of his life, is struck by a hostile 
hand in some by-way as he passes home to enjoy his triumph. 



CHAPTER VHL 

FAMINE AND POLITICAL TEOUBLE. 

Lord John Russell succeeded Sir Robert Peel as First Lord 
of the Treasury ; Lord Palmerston became Foreign Secretary ; 
Sir Charles "Wood was Chancellor of the Exchequer ; Lord 
Grey took charge of the Colonies ; and Sir George Grey was 
Home Secretary. Mr. Macaulay accepted the office of Pay- 
master-General, with a seat in the Cabinet, a distinction not 
usually given to the occupant of that office. The Ministry was 
not particularly strong in administrative talent. The Premier 
and the Foreign Secretary were the only members of the 



CH. VIII. FAMINE AND POLITICAL TROUBLE. 8$ 

Cabinet who could be called statesmen of the first class ; and 
even Lord Palmerston had not as yet won more than a some- 
what doubtful kind of fame, and was looked upon as a man 
quite as likely to do mischief as good to any Ministry of which 
he might happen to form a part. Lord Grey then and since 
only succeeded somehow in missing the career of a leading 
statesman. He had great talents and some originality ; he was 
independent and bold. But his independence degenerated too 
often into impracticability and even eccentricity ; and he was, 
in fact, a politician with whom ordinary men could not work. 
Sir Charles Wood, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, had 
solid sense and excellent administrative capacity, but he was 
about as bad a public speaker as ever addressed the House of 
Commons. His budget speeches were often made so unintel- 
ligible by defective manner and delivery that they might almost 
as well have been spoken in a foreign language. Sir George 
Grey was a speaker of fearful fluency, and a respectable 
administrator of the second or third class. He was as plod- 
ding in administration as he was precipitate of speech. 

The position of the Government of Lord John Eussell was 
not one to be envied. The Irish famine occupied all attention, 
and soon seemed to be an evil too great for any Ministry to deal 
with. The failure of the potato was an overwhelming disaster 
for a people almost wholly agricultural and a peasantry long 
accustomed to live upon that root alone. Ireland contains 
very few large towns ; when the names of four or five are 
mentioned the list is done with, and we have to come to mere 
villages. The country has hardly any manufactures except that 
of linen in the northern province. In the south and west the 
people live by agriculture alone. The cottier system, which 
prevailed almost universally in three of the four provinces, 
was an arrangement by which a man obtained in return for 
his labour a right to cultivate a little patch of ground, just 
enough to supply him with food for the scanty maintenance 
of his family. The great landlords were for the most part 
absentees ; the smaller landlords were often deeply in debt, 
and were therefore compelled to screw every possible penny of 
rent out of their tenants-at-will. 

Underlying all the relations of landlord and tenant in 
Ireland were two great facts. The occupation of land was 
virtually a necessity of life to the Irish tenant. That is the 
first fact. The second is, that the land system under which 
Ireland was placed was one entirely foreign to the traditions, 



86 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR C WN TIMES, ch. via 

the ideas, one might say the very genius, of the Irish people. 
The Irish peasant regarded the right to have a bit of land, hia 
share, exactly as other peoples regard the right to live. It was 
in his mind something elementary and self-evident. He could 
not be loyal to, he could not even understand, any system 
which did not secure that to him. 

The Irish peasant with his wife and his family lived on 
the potato. Not a county in Ireland wholly escaped the 
potato disease, and many of the southern and western counties 
were soon in actual famine. A peculiar form of fever — famine- 
fever it was called — began to show itself everywhere. A 
terrible dysentery set in as well. In some districts the people 
died in hundreds daily from fever, dysentery, or sheer starva- 
tion. It would have been impossible that in such a country 
as Ireland a famine of that gigantic kind should set in without 
bringing crimes of violence along with it. Unfortunately the 
Government had to show an immense activity in the intro- 
duction of Coercion Bills and other repressive measures. 

Whatever might be said of the Government, no one could 
doubt the goodwill of the English people. National Belief 
Associations were especially formed in England. Belief indeed 
began to be poured in from all countries. The misery went on 
deepening and broadening. It was far too great to be effectually 
encountered by subscriptions however generous ; and the Go- 
vernment, meaning to do the best they could, were practically at 
their wits' end. The starving peasants streamed into the nearest 
considerable town hoping for relief there, and found too often 
that there the very sources oi charity were dried up. Many, very 
many, thus disappointed, merely laid down on the pavement and 
died there. Along the country roads one met everywhere groups 
ol gaunt, dim- eyed wretches clad in miserable old sacking and 
wandering aimlessly with some vague idea of finding lood, as 
the boy in the lable hoped to find the gold where the rainbow 
touched the earth. Many remained in their empty hovels 
and took Death there when he came. In some regions the 
country seemed unpeopled for miles. 

When the famine was over and its results came to be 
estimated, it was found that Ireland had lost about two 
millions of her population. She had come down trom eight 
trillions to six. This was the combined effect of starvation, 
of the various diseases that followed in its path gleaning where 
it had failed to gather, and of emigration. Long after all the 
direct effects of the failure of the potato had ceased, the 



CH. viii. FAMINE AND POLITICAL TROUBLE. 87 

population still continued steadily to decrease. The Irish 
peasant had in fact had his eyes turned, as Mr. Bright after- 
wards expressed it, towards the setting sun, and for long years 
the stream of emigration westward never abated in its volume. 
A new Ireland began to grow up across the Atlantic. In 
every great city of the United States the Irish element began 
to form a considerable constituent of the population. 

The Government had hard work to do all this time. Lord 
George Bentinck was able to worry the Ministry somewhat 
effectively when they introduced a measure to reduce gradually 
the differential duties on sugar for a few years, and then 
replace these duties by a fixed and uniform rate. This was in 
short a proposal to apply the principle of Free Trade, instead 
of Protection, to sugar. Lord George Bentinck therefore 
proposed an amendment to the resolutions of the Govern- 
ment, declaring it unjust and impolitic to reduce the duty on 
foreign slave-grown sugar, as tending to check the advance of 
production by British free labour, and to give a great additional 
stimulus to slave labour. Many sincere and independent oppo- 
nents of slavery, Lord Brougham in the House of Lords among 
them, were caught by this view of the question. Lord George 
and his brilliant lieutenant at one time appeared as if they 
were likely to carry their point in the Commons. But it was 
announced that if the resolutions of the Government were 
defeated ministers would resign, and there was no one to take 
their place. Peel could not return to power ; and the time 
was far distant yet when Mr. Disraeli could form a Ministry. 
The opposition crumbled away therefore, and the Government 
measures were carried. 

There were troubles abroad as well as at home for the 
Government. Almost immediately on their coming into office, 
the project of the Spanish Marriages, concocted between King 
Louis Philippe and his minister, M. Guizot, disturbed for a time 
and very seriously the good understanding between England and 
France. In an evil hour for themselves and their fame, Louis 
Philippe and his minister believed that they could obtain a 
virtual ownership of Spain by an ingenious marriage scheme 
There was at one time a project talked of rather than actually 
entertained, of marrying the young Queen of Spain and her 
sister to the Due d'Aumale and the Due de Montpensier, both 
sons 01 Louis Philippe. But this would have been too daring 
a venture on the part of the King of the French. Apart from 
any objections to be entertained by other States, it was certain 



&$ A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. viii, 

that England could not * view with indifference,' as the diplo- 
matic phrase goes, the prospect of a son of the French King 
occupying the throne of Spain. 

Louis Philippe knew very well that he could not venture 
to marry one of his sons to the young Isabella. But he and 
his minister devised a scheme for securing to themselves and 
their policy the same effect in another way. They contrived 
that the Queen and her sister should be married at the same 
time — the Queen to her cousin, Don Francisco d'Assis, Duke 
of Cadiz ; and her sister to the Duke de Montpensier, Louis 
Philippe's son. There was reason to expect that the Queen, 
if married to Don Francisco, would have no children, and that 
the wife of Louis Philippe's son, or some one of her children, 
would come to the throne of Spain. 

This scheme proved a failure, so far as the objects of Louis 
Philippe and his minister were concerned. Queen Isabella 
had children ; Montpensier's wife did not come to the throne ; 
and the dynasty of Louis Philippe fell before long. But the 
friendship between England and France, from which so many 
happy results seemed likely to come to Europe, and the cause 
of free government, was necessarily interrupted for a time. 

The year 1848 was an era in the modern history of Europe. 
It was the year of unfulfilled revolutions. The fall of the 
dynasty of Louis Philippe may be said to have set the revolu- 
tionary tide flowing. 

Louis Philippe fled to England, and his flight was the 
signal for long pent-up fires to break out all over Europe. 
Bevolution soon was aflame in nearly all the capitals of 
the Continent. Bevolution is like an epidemic ; it finds out 
the weak places in systems. The two European countries 
which being tried by it stood it best, were England and 
Belgium. In the latter country the King made frank appeal 
to his people, and told them that if they wished to be rid of 
him he was quite willing to go. Language of this kind was 
new in the mouths of sovereigns ; and the Belgians were a 
people well able to appreciate it. They declared for their 
King and the shock of the revolution passed harmlessly away. 
In England and Ireland the effect of the events in France 
was instantly made manifest. The Chartist agitation, which 
had been much encouraged by the triumphant return of 
Feargus O'Connor for Nottingham at the general election of 
1847, at once came to a head. 

It was determined to present a monster petition to the 



ch. vin. FAMINE AND POLITICAL TROUBLE. 89 

House of Commons demanding the Charter, and in fact offer- 
ing a last chance to Parliament to yield quietly to the demand. 
The petition was to be presented by a deputation who were to 
be conducted by a vast procession up to the doors of the 
House. The procession was to be formed on Kennington 
Common, the space then unenclosed which is now Kennington 
Park, on the south side of London. There the Chartists 
were to be addressed by their still trusted leader, Feargus 
O'Connor, and they were to march in military order to 
present their petition. The object undoubtedly was to 
make such a parade of physical force as should overawe the 
Legislature and the Government, and demonstrate the im- 
possibility of refusing a demand backed by such a reserve of 
power. The proposed procession was declared illegal, and all 
peaceful and loyal subjects were warned not to take any part 
in it. But this was exactly what the more ardent among the 
Chartists expected and desired to see. 

At a meeting of the Chartist Convention held the night 
before the demonstration, a considerable number were for 
going armed to Kennington Common. Feargus O'Connor 
had, however, sense enough still left to throw the weight of 
his influence against such an insane proceeding, and to insist 
that the demonstration must show itself to be, as it was 
from the first proclaimed to be, a strictly pacific proceeding 
The more ardent spirits at once withdrew from the organisa- 
tion. Those who might even at the very last have done 
mischief if they had remained part of the movement, with- 
drew from it ; and Chartism was left to be represented by an 
open air meeting and a petition to Parliament, like all the 
other demonstrations that the metropolis had seen to pass, 
hardly heeded, across the field of politics. But the public at 
large was not' aware that the fangs of Chartism had been 
drawn before it was let loose to play on Kennington Common 
that memorable tenth of April. London awoke in great 
alarm that day. The wildest rumours were spread abroad in 
many parts of the metropolis. Long before the Chartists had 
got together on Kennington Common at all, various remote 
quarters of London were filled with horrifying reports of en- 
counters between the insurgents and the police or the military, 
in which the Chartists invariably had the better, and as a 
result of which they were marching in full force to the 
particular district where the momentary panic prevailed. 
London is worse off than most cities in such a time of alarm. 



90 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. v\\\ 

It is too large for true accounts of things rapidly to diffuse 
themselves. In April 1848, the street telegraph was not in 
use for carrying news through cities, and the rapidly succeed- 
ing editions of the cheap papers were as yet unknown. In 
various quarters of London, therefore, the citizen was left 
through the greater part of the day to all the agonies of 
doubt and uncertainty. 

There was no lack, however, of public precautions against 
an outbreak of armed Chartism. The Duke of Wellington 
took charge of all the arrangements for guarding the public 
buildings and defending the metropolis generally. He acted 
with extreme caution, and told several influential persons that 
troops were in readiness everywhere, but that they would not 
be seen unless an occasion actually rose for calling on their 
services. The coolness and presence of mind of the stern old 
soldier are well illustrated in the fact that to several persons 
of influence and authority who came to him with suggestions 
for the defence of this place or that, his almost invariable 
answer was ' Done already,' or ' Done two hours ago,' or 
something of the kind. A vast number of Londoners enrolled 
themselves as special constables for the maintenance of law 
and order. Nearly two hundred thousand persons, it is said, 
were sworn in for this purpose ; and it will always be told as 
an odd incident of that famous scare, that the Prince Louis 
Napoleon, then living in London, was one of those who 
volunteered to bear arms in the preservation of order. Not a 
long time was to pass away before the most lawless outrage on 
the order* and life of a peaceful city was to be perpetrated by 
the special command of the man who was so ready to lend the 
saving aid of his constable's staff to protect English society 
against some poor hundreds or thousands of English working 
men. 

Tha crisis, however, luckily proved not to stand in need of 
such saviours of society. The Chartist demonstration was a 
wretched failure. The meeting on Kennington Common, so 
far from being a gathering of half a million of men, was not 
a larger concourse than a temperance demonstration had often 
drawn together on the same spot. The procession was not 
formed, O'Connor himself strongly insisting on obedience to 
the orders of the authorities. The great Chartist petition 
itself, which was to have made so profound an impression on 
the House 01 Commons, proved as utter a lailure as the 
demonstration on Kennington Common. It was made certain 



CH. vni. FAMINE AND POLITICAL TROUBLE. 91 

that the number of genuine signatures was ridiculously below 
the estimate formed by the Chartist leaders ; and the agita- 
tion, after terrifying respectability for a long time, suddenly 
showed itself a thing only to be laughed at. 

Here comes not inappropriately to an end the history of 
English Chartism. It died of publicity ; of exposure to the 
air ; of the Anti-Corn Law League ; of the evident tendency 
of the time to settle all questions by reason, argument, and 
majorities ; of growing education ; of a strengthening sense of 
duty among all the more influential classes. All that was sound 
in its claims asserted itself and was in time conceded. But 
its active or aggressive influence ceased with 1848. Not since 
that year has there been any serious talk or thought of any 
agitation asserting its claims by the use or even display of 
armed force in England. 

The spirit of the time had meanwhile made itself felt in a 
dinerent way in Ireland. For some months before the begin- 
ning of the year the Young Ireland party had been established 
as a rival association to the Kepealers who still believed 
in the policy of O'Connell. The Nation newspaper was con- 
ducted and written for by some rising young men of high 
culture and remarkable talent. It was inspired in the begin- 
ning by at least one genuine poet, Mr. Thomas Davis, who 
unfortunately died in his youth. The Young Ireland party 
had received a new support by the adhesion of Mr. William 
Smith O'Brien to their ranks. Mr. O'Brien was a man of 
considerable influence in Ireland. He had a large property 
and high rank. He was connected with or related to many 
aristocratic families. His brother was Lord Inchiquin ; the 
title of the Marquisate of Thomond was in the family. He 
was undoubtedly descended from the famous Irish hero and 
king Brian Boru, and was inordinately proud of his claims of 
long descent. He had the highest personal character and the 
finest sense of honour ; but his capacity for leadership of any 
movement was very slender. His adhesion to the cause of Young 
Ireland gave the movement a decided impulse. His rank, his 
legendary descent, his undoubted chivalry of character and 
purity of purpose lent a romantic interest to his appearance as 
the recognised leader, or at least the figure-head, of the Young 
Irelanders. 

Smith O'Brien was a man 01 more mature years than most 
of his companions in the movement. He was some forty- three 
or four years of age when he took the leadership of the move- 



92 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. vm. 

ment. Thomas Francis Meagher, the most brilliant orator of 
the party, a man who under other conditions might have 
risen to great distinction in public life, was then only about 
two or three-and-twenty. Mitchel and Duffy, who were re- 
garded as elders among the Young Irelanders, were perhaps 
each somr thirty years of age. 

Before the death of O'Connell the formal secession of the 
Young Irrland party from the regular Eepealers had taken 
place. The Continental revolutions of the year 1848 suddenly 
converted the movement from a literary and poetical organi- 
sation into a rebellious conspiracy. The fever of that wild 
epoch spread itself at once over Ireland. In the meantime a 
fresh and a stronger influence than that of O'Brien or Meagher 
had arisen in Young Irelandism. Young Ireland itself now 
split into two sections, one for immediate action, the other for 
caution and delay. The party of action acknowledged the 
leadership of John Mitchel. The organ of this section was 
the newspaper started by Mitchel in opposition to the Nation, 
which had grown too slow for him. The new journal was 
called the United Irishman, and in a short time completely 
distanced the Nation in popularity and in circulation. The 
deliberate policy of the United Irishman was to force the hand 
first of the Government and then of the Irish people. Mitchel 
had made up his mind so to rouse the passion of the people as 
to compel the Government to take steps for the prevention of 
rebellion by the arrest of some of the leaders. Then Mitchel 
calculated upon the populace rising to defend or rescue their 
heroes — and then the game would be afoot; Ireland would 
be entered in rebellion ; and the rest would be for fate to 
decide. 

The Government brought in a bill for the better security of 
the Crown and Government, making all written incitement to 
insurrection or resistance to the law, felony punishable 
with transportation. This measure was passed rapidly through 
all its stages. It enabled the Government to suppress news- 
papers like the United Irishman, and to keep in prison 
without bail, while awaiting trial, anyone charged with an 
offence under the new Act. Mitchel soon gave the authorities 
an opportunity of testing the efficacy of the Act in his person. 
He repeated his incitements to insurrection, was arrested and 
thrown into prison. The climax of the excitement in Ireland 
was reached when Mitchel' s trial came on. There can be 
little doubt that he was filled with a strong hope that hia 



CH. viii. FAMINE AND POLITICAL TROUBLE. 93 

followers would attempt to rescue him. Had there been 
another Mitchel out of doors, as fearless and reckless as the 
Mitchel in the prison, a sanguinary outbreak would probably 
have taken place. But the leaders of the movement outside 
were by no means clear in their own minds as to the course 
they ought to pursue. They discouraged any idea of an attempt 
to rescue Mitchel. His trial came on. He was found guilty. 
He made a short but powerful and impassioned speech from 
the dock ; he was sentenced to fourteen years' transportation ; 
he was hurried under an escort of cavalry through the streets 
of Dublin, put on board a ship of war, and in a few hours 
was on his way to Bermuda. Dublin remained perfectly quiet ; 
the country outside hardly knew what was happening until 
Mitchel was well on his way, and far-seeing persons smiled 
to themselves and said the danger was over. 

So indeed it proved to be. The Government suspended 
the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland, and issued warrants for 
the arrest of Smith O'Brien, Meagher, and other confederate 
leaders. Smith O'Brien, Meagher, Dillon, and others left 
Dublin and went down into the country. They held a series 
of gatherings which might be described as meetings of agita- 
tors or marshallings of rebels, according as one was pleased to 
interpret their purpose. But this sort of thing very soon 
drifted into rebellion. The principal body of the followers of 
Smith O'Brien came into collision with the police at a. place 
called Ballingarry, in Tipperary. The police fired a few volleys. 
The rebels fired, with what wretched muskets and rifles they 
possessed, but without harming a single policeman. After a 
few of their number had been killed or wounded — it never was 
perfectly certain that any were actually killed — the rebel band 
dispersed, and the rebellion was all over. 

Smith O'Brien, Meagher, and some of their companions 
were arrested. The prisoners were brought for trial before a 
special commission held at Olonmel, in Tipperary, in the follow- 
ing September. Smith O'Brien was the first put on trial, and 
was found guilty. He was sentenced to death after the old form 
in cases of high treason — to be hanged, beheaded, and quartered. 
Meagher was afterwards found guilty, and sentenced to death 
with the same hideous formalities. No one, however, really be- 
lieved for a moment that such a sentence was likely to be carried 
out in the reign of Queen Victoria. The sentence of death 
was changed into one of transportation for life. The convicts 
were all sent to Australia, and a few years after Meagher con- 



94 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. vm. 

trived to make his escape. He was soon followed by Mitchel. 
Smith O'Brien himself afterwards received a pardon on con- 
dition of his not returning to these islands ; but this condition 
was withdrawn after a time, and he came back to Ireland. He 
died quietly in Wales in 1864. Mitchel settled for a while in 
Bichmond, Virginia, and became an ardent advocate of slavery 
and an impassioned champion of the Southern rebellion. He 
returned to the North after the rebellion, and more lately 
came to Ireland, where, owing to some defect in the criminal 
law, he could not be arrested, his time of penal servitude 
having expired although he had not served it. He was still a 
hero with many of the people ; he was put up as a candi- 
date for an Irish county and elected. He was not allowed 
to enter the House of Commons, however ; the election was 
declared void, and a new writ was issued. He was elected 
again, and some turmoil was expected, when suddenly Mitchel, 
who had long been in sinking health, was withdrawn from the 
controversy by death. Meagher served in the army of the 
Federal States when the war broke out, and showed much of 
the soldier's spirit and capacity. His end was premature and 
inglorious. He fell from the deck of a steamer one night ; it 
was dark and there was a strong current running ; help came 
too late. A false step, a dark night, and the muddy waters of 
the Missouri closed the career that had opened with so much 
promise of brightness. 

Many of the conspicuous Young Irelanders rose to some 
distinction. Charles Gavan Duffy, the editor of the Nation, 
who was twice put on his trial after the failure of the insur- 
rection, but whom a jury would not on either occasion convict, 
became a member of the House of Commons, and afterwards 
emigrated to the colony of Victoria. He rose to be Prime 
Minister there, and received knighthood from the Crown, and 
a pension irom the Colonial Parliament. Thomas Darcy 
M'Gee, another prominent rebel, went to the United States, 
and thence to Canada, where he rose to be a minister of 
the Crown. He was one of the most loyal supporters of the 
British connection. His imtimely death by the hand of an 
assassin was lamented in England as well as in the colony he 
had served so well. 



CH. IX. ATHENS, ROME AND LONDON. 95 

CHAPTEE IX. 

ATHENS, ROME AND LONDON. 

The name of Don Pacifico was familiar to the world some 
quarter of a century ago as that of the man whose quarrel had 
nearly brought on a European war, had caused a temporary dis- 
turbance of good relations between England and France, split 
up political parties in England in a manner hardly ever known 
before, and established the reputation of Lord Palmerston as 
one of the greatest Parliamentary debaters of his time. 

Don Pacifico was a Jew, a Portuguese by extraction, but a 
native of Gibraltar and a British subject living in Athens. It 
had been customary in Greek towns to celebrate Easter by 
burning an effigy of Judas Iscariot. In 1847 the police of 
Athens were ordered to prevent this performance, and the mob, 
disappointed of their favourite amusement, ascribed the new 
orders to the influence of the Jews. Don Pacifico's house 
happened to stand near the spot where the Judas was annually 
burnt ; Don Pacifico was known to be a Jew ; and the anger 
of the mob was wreaked upon him accordingly. Don Pacifico 
made a claim against the Greek Government for compensation 
for nearly thirty-two thousand pounds sterling. Another claim 
was made at the same time by another British subject, a man of 
a very different stamp from Don Pacifico. This was Mr. Finlay , 
the historian of Greece. Mr. Finlay had settled in Athens when 
the independence of Greece had been established. Some of his 
land had been taken for the purpose of rounding off the new 
palace gardens of King Otho ; and Mr. Finlay had declined to 
accept the terms offered by the Greek Government, to which 
other landowners in the same position as himself had assented. 

None of these questions would seem at first sight to wear 
a very grave international character. Unluckily Lord Palmer- 
ston became possessed with the idea that the French minister 
in Greece was secretly setting the Greek Government on to 
resist our claims. For the Foreign Office had made the 
claims ours, and insisted that Greece must pay up within 
a given time or take the consequences. Greece hesitated, and 
accordingly the British fleet was sent to the Piraeus, and seized 
all the Greek vessels belonging ta the Government and to 
private merchants that were found within the waters. 



96 A SHORT HISTORY OF OVR OWN TIMES, ch. IX. 

The Greek Government appealed to France and Bussia as 
powers joined with us in the treaty to protect the independence 
of Greece. France and Bussia were both disposed to make 
bitter complaint of not having been consulted in the first instance 
by the British Government ; nor was their feeling greatly softened 
by Lord Palmerston's peremptory reply that it was all a ques- 
tion between England and Greece, with which no other power 
had any business to interfere. At last something like a friendly 
arbitration was accepted from France, and the French Govern- 
ment sent a special representative to Athens to try to come to 
terms with our minister there. The difficulties appeared likely 
to be adjusted. But some spirit of mischief seemed to have 
this unlucky affair in charge from the first. A new quarrel 
threatened at one time to break out between England and 
France. The French Government actually withdrew their am- 
bassador, M. Drouyn de Lhuys, from London ; and there was 
for a short time a general alarm over Europe. But after a while 
our Government gave way, and agreed to an arrangement which 
was in the main all that France desired. When, after a long 
lapse of time, the arbitrators came to settle the claims of Don 
Pacifico, it was found that he was entitled to about one-thirtieth 
of the sum he had originally demanded. Don Pacifico, it seems, 
charged in his bill one hundred and fifty pounds sterling for a 
bedstead, thirty pounds for the sheets of the bed, twenty-five 
pounds for two coverlets, and ten poimds for a pillow-case. The 
jewellery of his wife and daughters he estimated at two thou- 
sand pounds. It seems too that he had always lived in a humble 
sort of way, and was never supposed by his neighbours to possess 
such splendour of ornament and household goods. 

While the controversy between the English and French 
Governments was yet unfinished, Lord Stanley proposed in 
the House of Lords a resolution which was practically a 
vote of censure on the Government. The resolution was 
carried, after a debate of great spirit and energy, by a 
majority *of thirty-seven. Lord Palmerston was not dis- 
mayed. A Ministry is seldom greatly troubled by an adverse 
vote in the House of Lords. Still it was necessary that 
something should be done in the Commons to counterbalance 
the stroke of the Lords, and accordingly Mr. Eoebuck, acting 
as an independent member, although on this occasion in 
harmony with the Government, brought forward on June 24, 
1850, a resolution which boldly affirmed that the principles 
on which the foreign policy of the Government had been 



ch. ix. ATHENS, ROME, AND LONDON, 97 

regulated were ' such as were calculated to maintain the 
honour and dignity of this country ; and in times of un- 
exampled difficulty to preserve peace between England and 
the various nations of the world.' 

Among those who condemned the policy of Lord Palmerston 
were Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Cobden, Sir Eobert Peel, Sir William 
Molesworth, and Mr. Sidney Herbert in the Commons. In 
the House of Lords, Lord Brougham, Lord Canning, and 
Lord Aberdeen had supported the resolution of Lord Stanley. 
The principal interest of the debate now rests in the manner 
of Lord Palmerston's defence. That speech was indeed a 
masterpiece of Parliamentary argument and address. Lord 
Palmerston really made it appear as if the question between 
him and his opponents was that of the protection of English- 
men abroad ; as if he were anxious to look after their lives and 
safety, while his opponents were urging the odious principle 
that when once an Englishman put his foot on a foreign shore 
his own Government renounced all intent to concern them- 
selves with any fate that might befall him. In a peroration of 
thrilling power Lord Palmerston asked for the verdict of the 
House to decide ' whether, as the Eoman in days of old held 
himself free from indignity when he could say "I am a Eoman 
citizen," so also a British subject, in whatever land he may 
be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong 
arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong.' 
When Lord Palmerston closed his speech the overwhelming 
plaudits of the House foretold the victory he had won. It was 
indeed a masterpiece of telling defence. The speech occupied 
some five hours in delivery. It was spoken, as Mr. Gladstone 
afterwards said, from the dusk of one day to the dawn of the 
next. It was spoken without the help of a single note. 

After a debate of four nights, a majority of forty-six was 
given for the resolution. The Ministry came out not only 
absolved but triumphant. The odd thing about the whole 
proceeding is that the ministers in general heartily disapproved 
of the sort of policy which Palmerston defended so eloquently 
and put so energetically into action — at least they disapproved, 
if not his principles, yet certainly his way of enforcing them. 
Of many fine speeches made during this brilliant debate we 
must notice one in particular. It was that of Mr. Cockburn, 
then member for Southampton. Never in our time has a repu- 
tation been more suddenly, completely, and deservedly made 
than Mr. Cockburn won by his brilliant display of ingenious 

5 



98 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. ix. 

argument and stirring words. The manner of the speaker lent 
additional effect to his clever and captivating eloquence. He 
had a clear, sweet, penetrating voice, a fluency that seemed so 
easy as to make listeners sometimes fancy that it ought to cost 
no effort, and a grace of gesture such as it must be owned the 
courts of law where he had had his training do not often teach. 
Mr. Cockburn defended the policy of Palmerston with an effect 
only inferior to that produced by Palmerston' s own speech, 
and with a rhetorical grace and finish to which Palmerston 
made no pretension. Mr. Cockburn's career was safe from 
that hour. It is needless to say that he well upheld in after 
years the reputation he won in a night. The brilliant and 
sudden success of the member for Southampton was but the 
fitting prelude to the abiding distinction won by the Lord 
Chief Justice of England. 

One association of profound melancholy clings to that 
great debate. The speech delivered by Sir Eobert Peel was 
the last that was destined to come from his lips. The debate 
closed on the morning of Saturday, June 29. It was nearly 
four o'clock when the division was taken, and Peel left the 
House as the sunlight was already beginning to stream into 
corridors and lobbies. He went home to rest ; but his sleep 
could not be long. He had to attend a meeting of the Eoyal 
Commissioners of the Great Industrial Exhibition at twelve. 
He returned home for a short time after the meeting, and 
then set out for a ride in the Park. He called at Buckingham 
Palace and wrote his name in the Queen's visiting-book. Then 
as he was riding up Constitution Hill he stopped to talk to a 
young lady, a friend of his, who was also riding. His horse 
suddenly shied and flung him off; and Peel clinging to the 
bridle, the animal fell with its knees on his shoulders. The 
injuries which he received proved beyond all skill of surgery. 
He lingered, now conscious, now delirious with pain, for two 
or three days ; and he died about eleven o'clock on the night 
of July 2. Most of the members of his family and some of 
his dearest old friends and companions in political arms were 
beside him when he died. The tears of the Duke of Welling- 
ton in one House of Parliament, and the eloquence of Mr. 
Gladstone in the other, were expressions as fitting and adequate 
as might be of the universal feeling of the nation. 

Peel seemed destined for great things yet when he died. 
He was but in his sixty-third year ; he was some years younger 
than Lord Palmerston, who may be said without exaggeration 



ch. ix. ATHENS, ROME, AND LONDON 99 

to have just achieved his first great success. Many circum- 
stances were pointing to Peel as likely before long to be sum- 
moned again to the leadership in the government of the country. 
It is superfluous to say that his faculties as Parliamentary 
orator or statesman were not showing any signs of decay. An 
English public man is not supposed to show signs of decaying 
faculties at sixty-two. The shying horse and perhaps the bad 
ridership settled the question of Peel's career between them. 

To the same year belongs the close of another remarkable 
career. On August 26, 1850, Louis Philippe, lately King of 
the French, died at Claremont, the guest of England. Few 
men in history had gone through greater reverses. He had 
been soldier, exile, college teacher, wanderer among American- 
Indian tribes, resident of Philadelphia, and of Bloomingdale 
in the New York suburbs, and King of the French. He 
died in exile among us, a clever, unwise, grand, mean old 
man. There was a great deal about him which made him 
respected in private life, and when he had nothing to do 
with state intrigues and the foreign policy of courts. He 
was much liked in England, where after his sons lived for 
many years. But there were Englishmen who did not like him 
and did not readily forgive him. One of these was Lord 
Pahnerston. Louis Philippe always detested Lord Palmer- 
ston. Lord Palmerston wrote to bis brother a few days after 
the death of Louis Philippe, expressing his sentiments there- 
upon with the utmost directness. * The death of Louis 
Philippe,' he said, ' delivers me from my most artful and 
inveterate enemy, whose position gave him in many ways the 
power to injure me.' 

The autumn of 1850 and the greater part of 1851 were dis- 
turbed by a sharp and embittered struggle with the Papal 
court. The movement among some scholarly, mystical men 
in England towards the Boman Church had made a profound 
impression in Borne. . To the eyes of Papal enthusiasm the 
whole English nation was only waiting for some word in sea- 
son to return to the spiritual jurisdiction of Borne. A Papal 
bull, ' given at St. Peter's, Borne, under the seal of the fisher- 
man,' directed the establishment in England ' of a hierarchy 
of bishops deriving their titles from their own sees, which we 
constitute by the present letter in the various apostolic districts.' 
There always were Catholic bishops in England. There were 
Catholic archbishops. They were free to go and come, to 
preach and teach as they liked ; to dress as they liked ; for al] 

LOfC. 



ioo A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. ix. 

that nineteen out of every twenty Englishmen cared, they 
might have been also free to call themselves what they liked. 
The anger was not against the giving of the new titles, but 
against the assumption of a new right to give titles represent- 
ing territorial distinctions in this country ; against the Pope's 
evident assumption that the change he was making was the 
natural result of an actual change in the national feeling of 
England. The Pope had divided England into various 
dioceses, which he placed under the control of an archbishop 
and twelve suffragans ; and the new archbishop was Cardinal 
Wiseman. Under the title of Archbishop of Westminster and 
Administrator Apostolic of the Diocese of Southwark, Cardi- 
nal Wiseman was now to reside in London. Cardinal Wise- 
man was already well known in England. He was of Eng- 
lish descent on his father's side and of Irish on his mother's ; 
he was a Spaniard by birth, and a Eoman by education. His 
family on both sides was of good position ; his father came of 
a long line of Essex gentry. Wiseman had held the professor- 
ship of Oriental languages in the English College at Eome, 
and afterwards became rector of the college. In 1840 he was 
appointed by the Pope one of the Vicars Apostolic in England, 
and held his position here as Bishop of Melipotamus in parti- 
bus infidelium. He was well known to be a fine scholar, an 
accomplished linguist, and a powerful preacher and controver- 
sialist. But he was believed also to be a man of great ecclesias- 
tical ambition — ambition for his Church, that is to say — of 
singular boldness, and of much political ability. The Pope's 
action was set down as in great measure the work of Wiseman. 
The Cardinal himself was accepted in the minds of most Eng- 
lishmen as a type of the regular Italian ecclesiastic — bold, 
clever, ambitious, and unscrupulous. The very fact of his Eng- 
lish extraction only militated the more against him in the public 
feeling. He was regarded as in some sense one who had gone 
over to the enemy, and who was the more to be dreaded be- 
cause of the knowledge he carried with him. The first step 
taken by Cardinal Wiseman did not tend to charm away this 
feeling. He issued a pastoral letter, addressed to England, on 
October 7, 1850, which was set forth as * given out of the 
Flaminian Grate of Borne.' This description of the letter was 
afterwards stated to be in accordance with one of the neces- 
sary formularies of the Church of Borne; but it was then 
assumed in England to be an expression of insolence and 
audacity intended to remind the English people that from out 



CH. ix. ATHENS, ROME, AND LONDON. 101 

of Borne itself came the assertion of supremacy over them. 
This letter was to be read publicly in all the Eoman Catholic 
churches in London. It addressed itself directly to the Eng- 
lish people, and it announced that ' your beloved country hag 
received a place among the fair churches which normally con- 
stituted form the splendid aggregate of Catholic communion ; 
Catholic England has been restored to its orbit in the ecclesi- 
astical firmament from which its light had long vanished ; and 
begins now anew its course of regularly- adjusted action round 
the centre of unity, the source of jurisdiction, of light, and of 
vigour.' 

The letter had hardly reached England when the country 
was aroused by another letter coming from a very different 
quarter, and intended as a counterblast to the Papal assump- 
tion of authority. This was Lord John Kussell's famous Dur- 
ham letter. The letter was in reply to one from the Bishop 
of Durham, and was dated ' Downing Street, November 4.' 
Lord John Eussell condemned in the most unmeasured terms 
the assumption of the Pope as ' a pretension of supremacy 
over the realm of England, and a claim to sole and undivided 
sway, which is inconsistent with the Queen's supremacy, with 
the rights of our bishops and clergy, and with the spiritual 
independence of the nation as asserted even in the Eoman 
Catholic times.' But Lord John Eussell went further than all 
this. He declared that there was a danger that alarmed him 
more than any aggression from a foreign sovereign, and that 
was ' the danger within the gates from the unworthy sons of the 
Church of England herself.' The Catholics looked upon the 
letter as a declaration of war against Catholicism ; the fana 
tical of the other side welcomed it as a trumpet-call to a new 
* No Popery ' agitation. 

The very day after the letter appeared was the Guy Faux 
anniversary. All over the country the effigies of the Pope 
and Cardinal Wiseman took the place of the regulation ' Gary,' 
and were paraded and burnt amid tumultuous demonstrations. 
Mr. Disraeli endeavoured at once to foment the prevailing heat 
of public temper and at the same time to direct its fervour 
against the Ministry themselves, by declaring in a published 
letter that he could hardly blame the Pope for supposing him- 
self at liberty to divide England into bishoprics, seeing the 
encouragement he had got from the ministers themselves by 
the recognition they had offered to the Eoman Catholic hier- 
archy of Ireland. As a matter of fact it was not the existing 



102 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. IX 

Government that had recognised the rank of the Irish Catho- 
lic prelates. The recognition had been formally arranged in 
January 1845 by a royal warrant or commission for carrying 
out the Charitable Bequests Act, which gave the Irish Catho- 
lic prelates rank immediately after the prelates of the Estab- 
lished Church of the same degree. But the letter of Mr. 
Disraeli, like that of Lord John Bussell, served to inflame 
passions on both sides, and to put the country in the worst 
possible mood for any manner of wholesome legislation. 
Never during the same generation had there been such an out- 
burst of anger on both sides of the religious controversy. It 
was a curious incident in political history that Lord John 
Bussell, who had more than any Englishman then living been 
identified with the principles of religious liberty, who had sat 
at the feet of Fox, and had for his closest friend the Catholic 
poet Thomas Moore, came to be regarded by Boman Catholics 
as the bitterest enemy of their creed and their rights of worship. 
The opening of Parliament came on February 4, 1851. 
The Ministry had to do something. No Ministry that ever 
held power in England could have attempted to meet the 
House of Commons without some project of a measure to allay 
the intense excitement which prevailed throughout the country. 
Two or three days after the meeting of Parliament Lord John 
Bussell introduced his bill to prevent the assumption by 
Boman Catholics of titles taken from any territory or place 
within the United Kingdom. The measure proposed to pro- 
hibit the use of all such titles under penalty, and to render 
void all acts done by or bequests made to persons under such 
titles. The Boman Catholic Belief Act imposed a penalty of 
one hundred pounds for every assumption of a title taken from 
an existing see. Lord John Bussell proposed now to extend 
the penalty to the assumption of any title whatever from any 
place in the United Kingdom. The reception which was 
given to Lord John Bussell' s motion for leave to bring in this 
bill was not encouraging. Usually leave to bring in a bill is 
granted as a matter of course. Some few general observations 
of extemporaneous and guarded criticism are often made ; but 
the common practice is to offer no opposition. On this occa- 
sion, however, the debate on the motion for leave to bring in 
the bill was renewed for night after night, and the fullest 
promise of an angry and prolonged resistance was given. The 
opponents of the measure had on their side not only all the 
prominent champions of religious liberty like Sir James 



CH. ix. ATHENS, ROME, AND LONDON. 103 

Graham, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Cobden, and Mr. Bright ; but 
also Protestant politicians of such devotion to the interests of 
the Church as Mr. Eoundell Palmer, afterwards Lord Selborne, 
and Mr. Beresford Hope ; and of course they had with them 
all the Irish Catholic members. Mr. Koebuck described the 
bill as ' one of the meanest, pettiest, and most futile measures 
that ever disgraced even bigotry itself.' Mr. Bright called it 
'little, paltry, and miserable — a mere sham to bolster up 
Church ascendency.' Mr. Disraeli declared that he would 
not oppose the introduction of the bill ; but he spoke of it in 
language of as much contempt as Mr. Koebuck and Mr. Bright 
had used, calling it a mere piece of petty persecution. Sir 
Kobert Inglis, on the part of the more extreme Protestants, 
objected to the bill on the ground that it did not go far enough. 
Yet so strong was the feeling in favour of some legislation, that 
when the division was taken, three hundred and ninety-five 
votes were given for the motion, and only sixty-three against it. 

It was interrupted at one stage by events which had nothing 
to do with its history. The Government got into trouble of 
another kind. Mr. Locke King, member for East Surrey, 
asked for leave to bring in a bill to assimilate the county 
franchise to that existing in boroughs. Lord John Kussell 
opposed the motion, and the Government were defeated by 
100 votes against 52. It was evident that this was only what 
is called a ' snap ' vote ; that the House was taken by surprise, 
and that the result in no wise represented the general feeling 
of Parliament. But still it was a vexatious occurrence for the 
Ministry. Their budget had already been received with very 
general marks of dissatisfaction. The Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer only proposed a partial and qualified repeal of the 
window tax, an impost which was justly detested, and he 
continued the income tax. Under these circumstances Lord 
John Kussell felt that he had no alternative but to tender his 
resignation to the Queen. Leaving his Ecclesiastical Titles 
Bill suspended in air, he announced that he could no longer 
think of carrying on the government of the country. 

The question was who should succeed him. The Queen 
sent for Lord Stanley, afterwards Lord Derby. Lord Stanley 
offered to do his best to form a Government, but he tried with- 
out hope, and of course he was unsuccessful. The position 
of parties was very peculiar. It was impossible to form any 
combination which could really agree upon anything. There 
were three parties out of which a Ministry might be formed. 



104 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. ix. 

These were the Whigs, the Conservatives, and the Peelites. 
The Peelites were a very rising and promising body of men. 
Among them were Sir James Graham, Lord Canning, Mr. 
Gladstone, Mr. Sidney Herbert, Mr. Cardwell, and some 
others almost equally well known. Only these three groups 
were fairly in the competition for office; for the idea of a 
Ministry of Eadicals and Manchester men was not then likely 
to present itself to any official mind. But how could anyone 
put together a Ministry formed from a combination of these 
three ? The Peelites would not coalesce with the Tories be- 
cause of the Protection question, and because of Lord Stanley's 
own declaration that he still regarded the policy of Free 
Trade as only an experiment. The Peelites would not com- 
bine with the Whigs because of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. 
The Conservatives would not disavow protective ideas ; the 
Whigs would not give up the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. No 
statesman, therefore, could form a Government without having 
to count on two great parties being against him on one question 
or the other. There was nothing better to be done than to 
ask the ministers who had resigned to resume their places and 
muddle on as they best could. It is not enough to say that 
there was nothing better to be done : there was nothing else 
to be done. They were at all events still administering the 
affairs of the country, and no one would relieve them of the task. 
So the ministers returned to their places and resumed the 
Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. 

The Government at first, as we have seen, resolved to 
impose a penalty on the assumption of ecclesiastical titles 
by Boman Catholic prelates from places in the United Kingdom, 
and to make null and void all acts done or bequests made in 
virtue of such titles. But they found that it would be abso- 
lutely impossible to apply such legislation in Ireland. In that 
country a Catholic hierarchy had long been tolerated, and all 
the functions of a regular hierarchy had been in full and 
formal operation. To apply the new measure to Ireland would 
have been virtually to repeal the Boman Catholic Belief Act 
and restore the penal laws. On the other hand, the ministers 
were not willing to make one law against titles for England 
and another for Ireland. They were driven, therefore, to the 
course of withdrawing two of the stringent clauses of the 
bill, and leaving it little more than a mere declaration against 
the assumption of unlawful titles. But by doing this they 
furnished stronger reasons for opposition to both of the two 



CH. ix. ATHENS, ROME, AND LONDON. 10$ 

very different parties who had hitherto denounced their way 
of dealing with the crisis. Those who thought the bill did 
not go far enough before were of course indignant at the 
proposal to shear it of whatever little force it had originally 
possessed. They, on the other hand, who had opposed it as a 
breach of the principle of religious liberty could now ridicule 
it with all the greater effect on the ground that it violated a 
principle without even the pretext of doing any practical good 
as a compensation. 

The debates were long, fierce, and often passionate. The 
bill was wrangled over until the end of June, and then a 
large number, some seventy, of the Irish Catholic members 
publicly seceded from the discussion and announced that they 
would take no further part in the divisions. On this some of 
the strongest opponents of the Papal aggression, led by Sir 
Frederick Thesiger, afterwards Lord Chelmsford, brought in 
and carried a series of resolutions intended to make the bill 
more stringent than it had been even as originally introduced. 
The object of the resolutions was principally to give the power 
of prosecuting and claiming a penalty to anybody, provided he 
obtained the consent of the law officers of the Crown, and 
to make penal the introduction of bulls. When the measure 
came on for a third reading, Lord John Eussell moved the 
omission of the added clauses, but he was defeated by large 
majorities. The bill was done with so far as the House of 
Commons was concerned. After an eloquent and powerful 
protest from Mr. Gladstone against the measure, as one dis- 
paraging to the great principle of religious freedom, the bill 
was read a third time. It went up to the House of Lords, 
was passed there without alteration although not without 
opposition, and soon after received the Eoyal assent. 

This was practically the last the world heard about it. 
In the Eoman Church everything went on as before. The 
new Cardinal Archbishop still called himself Archbishop of 
Westminster ; some of the Irish prelates made a point of 
ostentatiously using their territorial titles in letters addressed 
to the ministers themselves. The bitterness of feeling which 
the Papal aggression and the legislation against it had called 
up did not indeed pass away very soon. It broke out again 
and again, sometimes in the form of very serious riot. But 
England was not restored to the communion of the Eoman 
Catholic Church. On the other hand, the Ecclesiastical Titles 
Act was never put in force. Nobody troubled about it. Many 
5* 



io6 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. ix. 

years after, in 1871, it was quietly repealed. It died in such 
obscurity that the outer public hardly knew whether it was 
above ground or below. 

The first of May, 1851, will always be memorable as the day 
on which the Great Exhibition was opened in Hyde Park. 
Golden indeed were the expectations with which hopeful 
people welcomed that historic Exhibition. It was the first 
organised to gather all the representatives of the world's 
industry into one great fair ; and there were those who 
seriously expected that men who had once been prevailed 
upon to meet together in friendly and peaceful rivalry would 
never again be persuaded to meet in rivalry of a fiercer kind. 
The Hyde Park Exhibition was often described as the festival 
to open the long reign of Peace. It might as a mere matter 
of chronology be called without any impropriety the festival 
to celebrate the close of the short reign of Peace. From that 
year, 1851, it may be said fairly enough that the world has 
hardly known a week of peace. The coup d'&tat in France 
closed the year. The Crimean War began almost immediately 
after and was followed by the Indian Mutiny, and that by the 
war between France and Austria, the long civil war in the 
United States, the Neapolitan enterprises of Garibaldi, and 
the Mexican intervention, until we come to the war between 
Austria, Prussia, and Denmark ; the short sharp struggle for 
German supremacy between Austria and Prussia, the war 
between France and Germany, the war between Eussia and 
Turkey, and our own various Asiatic and African wars. Such 
were, in brief summary, the events that quickly followed the 
great inaugurating Festival of Peace in 1851. 

The first idea of the Exhibition was conceived by Prince 
Albert ; and it was his energy and influence which succeeded 
in carrying the idea into practical execution. Prince Albert 
was President of the Society of Arts, and this position secured 
him a platform for the effective promulgation of his ideas. On 
June 30, 1849, he called a meeting of the Society of Arts at 
Buckingham Palace. He proposed that the Society should 
undertake the initiative in the promotion of an exhibition of 
the works of all nations. The idea was at once taken up by 
the Society of Arts, and by their agency spread abroad. In the 
first few days of 1850 a formal Commission was appointed ' for 
the promotion of the Exhibition of the Works of All Nations, 
to be holden in the year 1851.' Prince Albert was appointed 
Prssident of the Commission, 



CH. ix. ATHENS, ROME, AND LONDON, 107 

On March 21 in the same year the Lord Mayor of London 
gave a banquet at the Mansion House to the chief magistrates 
of the cities, towns, and boroughs of the United Kingdom, for 
the purpose of inviting their co-operation in support of the 
undertaking. Prince Albert was present and spoke. He had 
cultivated the art of speaking with much success, and had 
almost entirely overcome whatever difficulty stood in his way 
from his foreign birth and education. He never quite lost his 
foreign accent. But his style of speaking was clear, thoughtful, 
stately, and sometimes even noble. It exactly suited its pur- 
pose. It was that of a man who did not set up for an orator ; 
and who, when he spoke, wished that his ideas rather than 
his words should impress his hearers. At the dinner in the 
Mansion House he spoke with great clearness and grace of the 
purposes of the Great Exhibition. It was, he said, to ' give 
the world a true test, a living picture, of the point of industrial 
development at which the whole of mankhid has arrived, and 
a new starting-point from which all nations will be able to 
direct their further exertions.' 

It must not be supposed, however, that the project of the 
Great Exhibition advanced wholly without opposition. Many 
persons were disposed to sneer at it altogether ; many were 
sceptical about its doing any particular good ; not a few 
still regarded Prince Albert as a foreigner and a pedant, and 
were exceedingly slow to believe that anything really practical 
was likely to be devoloped under his impulse and protection. 
After some consideration the Eoyal Commissioners had fixed 
upon Hyde Park as the best site for the great building, and 
many energetic and some influential voices were raised in fierce 
outcry against what was called the profanation of the park. 
It was argued that the public use of Hyde Park would be de- 
stroyed by the Exhibition; that the Park would be utterly 
spoiled ; that its beauty could never be restored. A petition 
was presented by Lord Campbell to the House of Lords against 
the occupation of any part of Hyde Park with the Exhibition 
building. Lord Brougham supported the petition with his 
characteristic impetuosity and vehemence, and denounced the 
House of Lords for what he considered its servile deference to 
royalty in the matter of the Exhibition and its site. It is pro- 
bably true enough that only the influence of a prince could have 
carried the scheme to success against the storms of opposition 
that began to blow at various periods and from different points. 
Many times during its progress the Prince himself trembled 



lo8 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch ix. 

for the success of his scheme. Many a time he must have felt 
inclined to renounce it, or at least to regret that he had ever 
taken it up. 

Absurd as the opposition to the scheme may now seem, it 
is certain that a great many sensible persons thought the 
moment singularly inopportune for the gathering of large 
crowds, and were satisfied that some inconvenient, if not 
dangerous, public demonstrations must be provoked. The 
smouldering embers of Chartism, they said, were everywhere 
under society's feet. The crowds of foreigners would, some 
people said, naturally include large numbers of the ' Keds ' of 
all Continental nations, who would be only too glad to coalesce 
with Chartism and discontent of all kinds, for the purpose of 
disturbing the peace of London. The agitation caused by the 
Papal aggression was still in full force and flame. Most of 
the Continental sovereigns looked coldly on the undertaking. 
The King of Prussia took such alarm at the thought of the 
Red Bepublicans whom the Exhibition would draw together, 
that at first he positively prohibited his brother, then Prince 
of Prussia, now G-erman Emperor, from attending the opening 
ceremonial ; and though he afterwards withdrew the prohibi- 
tion, he remained full of doubts and fears as to the personal 
safety of any royal or princely personage found in Hyde Park 
on the opening day. The Duke of Cambridge being appealed 
to on the subject, acknowledged himself also full of appre- 
hensions. The objections to the site continued to grow up to 
a certain time, but public opinion gradually underwent a 
change, and the opposition to the site was defeated in the House 
of Commons by a large majority. 

Even, however, when the question of the site had been 
disposed of, there remained immense difficulties in the way. 
The press was not on the whole very favourable to the project. 
As the time for the opening drew near, some of the foreign 
diplomatists in London began to sulk at the whole project. 
There were small points of objection made about the position 
and functions of foreign ambassadors at the opening ceremonial, 
and up to the last moment it was not quite certain whether 
an absurd diplomatic quarrel might not have been part of the 
inaugural ceremonies of the opening day. 

The Prince did not despair, however, and the project went 
on. There was a great deal of difficulty in selecting a plan 
for the building. Huge structures of brickwork, looking like 
enormous railway sheds, costly and hideous at once, were 



ch. ix. A THENS ROME, AND LONDON. 109 

proposed ; it seemed almost certain that some one of tliem 
must be chosen. Happily, a sudden inspiration struck Mr. 
(afterwards Sir Joseph) Paxton. Why not try glass and iron ? 
he asked himself. Why not build a palace of glass and iron 
large enough to cover all the intended contents of the Exhi- 
bition, and which should be at once light, beautiful, and cheap ? 
Mr. Paxton sketched out his plan hastily ; the idea was eagerly 
accepted by the Eoyal Commissioners, and the palace of glass 
and iron arose within the specified time on the green turf of 
Hyde Park. The idea so happily hit upon was serviceable in 
more ways than one to the success of the Exhibition. It made 
the building itself as much an object of curiosity and wonder 
as the collections under its crystal roof. Of the hundreds of 
thousands who came to the Exhibition a goodly proportion 
were drawn to Hyde Park rather by a wish to see Paxton' s 
palace of glass than all the wonders of industrial and plastic 
art that it enclosed. 

The success of the opening day was indeed undoubted. 
There were nearly thirty thousand people gathered together 
within the building, and nearly three-quarters of a million of 
persons lined the way between the Exhibition and Buckingham 
Palace ; and yet no accident whatever occurred, nor had the 
police any trouble imposed on them by the conduct of anybody 
in the crowd. It is needless to say that there were no hostile 
demonstrations by Eed Eepublicans or malignant Chartists or 
infuriated Irish Catholics. The one thing which especially 
struck foreign observers, and to which many eloquent pens 
and tongues bore witness, was the orderly conduct of the 
people. Nor did the subsequent history of the Exhibition in 
any way belie the promise of its opening day. It continued 
to attract delighted crowds to the last, and more than once 
held within its precincts at one moment nearly a hundred 
thousand persons, a concourse large enough to have made the 
population of a respectable Continental capital. The Hyde 
Park enterprise bequeathed nothing very tangible or distinct 
to the world, except indeed the palace which, built out of its 
fabric, not its ruins, so gracefully ornaments one of the soft 
hills of Sydenham. But in a year made memorable by many 
political events of the greatest importance, of disturbed and 
tempestuous politics abroad and at home, of the deaths of 
many illustrious men, and the failure of many splendid hopes, 
the Exhibition in Hyde Park still holds its place in memory 
-—not for what it brought or accomplished, but simply for 
itself, its surroundings, and its house of glass. 



no A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. x. 

CHAPTER X. 

PALMERSTON. 

The death of Sir Robert Peel had left Lord Palmerston the 
most prominent, if not actually the most influential, among 
the statesmen of England. Palmerston's was a strenuous 
self-asserting character. He had given himself up to the study 
of foreign affairs as no minister of his time had done. He 
had a peculiar capacity for understanding foreign politics and 
people as well as foreign languages ; and he had come some- 
what to pique himself upon his knowledge. His sympathies 
were markedly liberal. In all the popular movements going 
on throughout the Continent Palmerston's sympathies were 
generally with the peoples and against the Governments ; while 
he had, on the other hand, a very strong contempt, which he 
took no pains to conceal, even for the very best class of the 
Continental demagogue. Palmerston seized a conclusion at 
once, and hardly ever departed from it. He never seemed to 
care who knew what he thought on any subject. He had a 
contempt for men of more deliberate temper, and often spoke 
and wrote as if he thought a man slow in forming an opinion 
must needs be a dull man, not to say a fool. All opinions 
not his own he held in good-humoured scorn. In some of his 
letters we find him writing of men of the most undoubted 
genius and wisdom, whose views have since stood all the test 
of time and trial, as if they were mere blockheads for whom 
no practical man could feel the slightest respect. It would be 
almost superfluous to say, in describing a man of such a nature, 
that Lord Palmerston sometimes fancied he saw great wisdom 
and force of character in men for whom neither then nor 
since did the world in general show much regard. As with a 
man, so with a cause, Lord Palmerston was to all appearance 
capricious in his sympathies. Calmer and more earnest minds 
were sometimes offended at what seemed a lack of deep-seated 
principle in his mindandhis policy, even when it happened that 
he and they were in accord as to the course that ought to be 
pursued. His levity often shocked them ; his blunt, brusque 
ways of speaking and writing sometimes gave downright offence. 
Lord Palmerston was unsparing in his lectures to foreign 
states. He "w as always admonishing them that they ought to 



ch. x. PALMERSTON. Ill 

lose no time in at once adopting the principles of government 
which prevailed in England. While therefore he was a Con- 
servative in home politics, and never even professed the 
slightest personal interest in any projects of political reform 
in England, he got the credit all over the Continent of being 
a supporter, promoter, and patron of all manner of revolu- 
tionary movements, and a disturber of the relations between 
subjects and their sovereigns. Palmer ston, therefore, had 
many enemies among European statesmen. It is now 
certain that the Queen frequently winced under the ex- 
pressions of ill-feeling which were brought to her ears as 
affecting England, and, as she supposed, herself, and which 
she believed to have been drawn on her by the inconsiderate 
and impulsive conduct of Palmerston. The Prince Consort, 
on whose advice the Queen very naturally relied, was a man 
of singularly calm and earnest nature. He liked to form 
his opinions deliberately and slowly, and disliked express- 
ing any opinion until his mind was well made up. Lord 
Palmerston, when Secretary for Foreign Affairs, was much in 
the habit of writing and answering despatches on the spur of 
the moment, and without consulting either the Queen or his 
colleagues. Palmerston complained of the long delays which 
took place on several occasions when, in matters of urgent 
importance, he waited to submit despatches to the Queen 
before sending them off. He contended too that where the 
general policy of state was clearly marked out and well 
known, it would have been idle to insist that a Foreign 
Secretary capable of performing the duties of his office should 
wait to submit for the inspection and approval of the Sovereign 
and his colleagues every scrap of paper he wrote on before it 
was allowed to leave England. But the Queen complained 
that on matters concerning the actual policy of the State 
Palmerston was in the habit of acting on his own independent 
judgment and authority; that she found herself more than 
once thus pledged to a course of policy which she had not 
had an opportunity of considering, and would not have 
approved if she had had such an opportunity ; and that she 
hardly ever found any question absolutely intact and un- 
compromised when it was submitted to her judgment. 

The Queen and the Prince had long chafed under Lord 
Palmerston's cavalier way of doing business. So far back as 
1849 her Majesty had felt obliged to draw the attention of the 
Foreign Secretary to the fact that his office was constitutionally 



112 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. x. 

under the control of the Prime Minister, and the despatches 
to be submitted for her approval should, therefore, pass through 
the hands of Lord John Eussell. Lord John Eussell approved 
of thi3 arrangement, only suggesting — and the suggestion is 
of some moment in considering Lord Palmerston's defence 
of his conduct afterwards— that every facility should be 
given for the transaction of business by the Queen's attend- 
ing to the draft despatches as soon as possible after their 
arrival. The Queen accepted the suggestion good-humouredly, 
only pleading that she should ' not be pressed for an answer 
within a few minutes, as is done now sometimes.' One can 
see a part of the difficulty at least even from these slight 
hints. Lord Palmerston was rapid in forming his judgments 
as in all his proceedings, and when once he had made up his 
mind Was impatient of any delay which seemed to him super- 
fluous.. Prince Albert was slow, deliberate, reflective, and 
methodical. Lord Palmerston was always sure he was right 
in every judgment he formed, even if it were adopted on 
the spur of the moment ; Prince Albert loved reconsideration 
and was open to new argument and late conviction. However, 
the difficulty was got over in 1849. Lord Palmerston agreed 
to every suggestion, and for the time all seemed likely to go 
smoothly. It was only for the time. The Queen soon be- 
lieved she had reason to complain that the new arrangement 
was not carried out. Things were going on, she thought, in 
just the old way. Lord Palmerston dealt as before with 
foreign courts according to what seemed best to him at the 
moment ; and his Sovereign and his colleagues often only 
knew of some important despatch or instruction when the 
thing was done and could not be conveniently or becomingly 
undone. The Prince, at her Majesty's request, wrote to Lord 
John Eussell, complaining strongly of the conduct of Lord 
Palmerston. An important memorandum was addressed by 
her Majesty to the Prime Minister, laying down in clear and 
severe language the exact rules by which the Foreign Secretary 
must be bound in his dealings with her. The memorandum 
was a severe and a galling rebuke for the Foreign Secretary. 
We can imagine with what emotions Lord Palmerston must have 
received it. He was a proud, self-confident man ; and it came 
on him just in the moment of his Pacifico triumph. But he 
kept down his feelings. It is impossible not to feel a high 
respect for the manner in which Lord Palmerston acted. He 
took his rebuke in the most perfect good temper. He wrote 



ch. x. PALMERSTOtf. 113 

a friendly and good-humoured letter to Lord John Bussell, 
saying, ' I have taken a copy of this memorandum of the 
Queen, and will not fail to attend to the directions which it 
contains.* Lord Palmer ston went a step farther in the way 
of conciliation. He asked for an interview with Prince 
Albert, and he explained to the Prince in the most emphatic 
and indignant terms that the accusation against him of being 
purposely wanting in respect to the Sovereign was absolutely 
unfounded. But he does not seem in the course of the inter- 
view to have done much more than argue the point as to the 
propriety and convenience of the system he had lately been 
adopting in the business of the Foreign Office. So for the 
hour the matter dropped. But it was destined to come up 
again in more serious form than before. 

About this time the Hungarians had been making a des- 
perate attempt to throw off the domination of Austria and 
assert their independence. The struggle had begun over some 
questions of constitutional rights involved in the connection 
between Hungary and Austria, but it grew into a regular re- 
bellion, having for its aim the complete freedom of Hungary. 
For a time it carried all before it, but it was finally crushed by the 
intervention of Bussia. This intervention of Bussia called up a 
wide and deep feeling of regret and indignation in this country. 
Louis Kossuth, who had been dictator of Hungary during the 
greater part of the insurrection, and who represented, in the 
English mind at least, the cause of Hungary and her national 
independence, came to England, and the English public wel- 
comed him with especial cordiality. There was much in 
Kossuth himself as well as in his cause to attract the enthu- 
siasm of popular assemblages. He had a strikingly handsome 
face and a stately presence. He was picturesque and perhaps 
even theatric in his dress and his bearing. He looked like a 
picture ; all his attitudes and gestures seemed as if they were 
meant to be reproduced by a painter. He was undoubtedly 
one of the most eloquent men who ever addressed an English 
popular audience. In one of his imprisonments Kossuth had 
studied the English language chiefly from the pages of Shake- 
speare. The English he spoke was the noblest in its style 
from which a student could supply his eloquence : Kossuth 
spoke the English of Shakespeare. Through all his speeches 
there ran the thread of one distinct principle of international 
policy to which Kossuth endeavoured to obtain the assent of 
the English people. This was the principle that if one State 



114 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. x, 

intervenes in the domestic affairs of another for the purpose of 
putting down revolution, it then becomes the right, and may- 
even be the duty, of any third State to throw in the weight of 
her sword against the unjustifiable intervention. As a prin- 
ciple this is nothing more than some of the ablest and most 
thoughtful Englishmen had advocated before and have advocated 
since. But in Kossuth's mind, and in the understanding of those 
who heard him, it meant that England ought to declare war 
against Eussiaor Austria, or both ; the former for having inter- 
vened between the Emperor of Austria and the Hungarians, 
and the latter for having invited and profited by the interven- 
tion. 

The presence of Kossuth and the reception he got excited a 
wild anger and alarm among Austrian statesmen. The Austrian 
Ambassador in England was all sensitiveness and remonstrance. 
The relations between this country and Austria seemed to 
become every day more and more strained. Lord Palmerston 
regarded the anger and the fears of Austria with a contempt 
which he took no pains to conceal. Lord Palmerston knew that 
the English public never had any serious notion of going to 
war with Austria in obedience to Kossuth's appeal. There 
came a time when Kossuth lived in England forgotten and 
unnoticed ; when his passing away from England was unob- 
served as his presence there long had been. The English 
crowds who applauded Kossuth at first meant nothing more 
than general sympathy with any hero of Continental revolu- 
tion, and personal admiration for the eloquence of the man 
who addressed them. But Kossuth did not thus accept the 
homage paid to him. No foreigner could have understood it 
in his place. Lord Palmerston understood it thoroughly, and 
knew what it meant, and how long it would last. 

Some of Lord Palmerston's colleagues, however, became 
greatly alarmed when it was reported that the Foreign 
Minister was about to receive a visit from Kossuth in person 
to thank him for the sympathy and protection which England 
had accorded to the Hungarian refugees while they were still 
in Turkey, and without which it is only too likely that they 
would have been handed over to Austria or Bussia. If 
Kossuth were received by Lord Palmerston, the Austrian 
ambassador, it was confidently reported, would leave Eng- 
land. Lord John Bussell took alarm, and called a meeting 
of the Cabinet to consider the momentous question. Lord 
Palmerston reluctantly consented to appease the alarms of his 



CH. x. PALMERSTON. 115 

colleagues by promising to avoid an interview with Kossuth. 
The hoped-for result, that of sparing the sensibilities of 
the Austrian Government, was not attained. In fact, things 
turned out a great deal worse than they might have done if 
the interview between Lord Palmerston and Kossuth had been 
quietly allowed to come off. Meetings were held to express 
sympathy with Kossuth, and addresses were voted to Lord 
Palmerston thanking him for the influence he had exerted in 
preventing the surrender of Kossuth to Austria. Lord Pal- 
merston consented to receive these addresses from the hands 
of deputations at the Foreign Office. The whole proceeding 
considerably alarmed some of Lord Palmerston's colleagues, 
and was regarded with distinct displeasure by the Queen and 
Prince Albert. But the possible indiscretion of Lord Palmerston's 
dealings with a deputation or two from Finsbury and Islington 
became a matter of little interest when the country was called 
upon to consider the propriety of the Foreign Secretary's 
dealings with the new ruler of a new state system, with the 
author of the coup d'etat. 

Things had been going rather strangely in France. After 
the fall of Louis Philippe a republic had been set up, and it 
had received the support of a young man whom we last saw 
playing the part of special constable against the Chartists, the 
Prince Louis Napoleon. Louis Napoleon was a nephew of 
the great Emperor. He had made attempts to get on the 
throne of France before, and been imprisoned and escaped, 
and taken refuge in England. Louis Napoleon had lived many 
years in England. He was as well known there as any prominent 
member of the English aristocracy. He went a good deal into 
very various society, literary, artistic, merely fashionable, purely 
rowdy, as well as into that political society which might have 
seemed natural to him. In all circles the same opinion appears 
to have been formed of him. From the astute Lord Palmer- 
ston to the most ignorant of the horse-jockeys with whom he 
occasionally consorted, all who met him seemed to think of 
the Prince in much the same way. It was agreed on all hands 
that he was a fatuous, dreamy, moony, impracticable, stupid 
young man. A sort of stolid amiability, not enlightened 
enough to keep him out of low company and questionable con- 
duct, appeared to be his principal characteristic. He con- 
stantly talked of his expected accession somehow and some time 
to the throne of France, and people only smiled pityingly at him. 
When the republic was fairly established he went over to 



Ii6 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. X. 

France, gave it his support, and succeeded in being elected its 
president. Then he plotted to overthrow it. He won the army 
to his side. On the second of December, 1851, he seized and 
imprisoned all his political opponents ; the next day he bora 
down with the most savage violence all possible opposition. 
Paris was in the hands of his soldiers ; hundreds of helpless 
people were slaughtered, the streets of Paris ran with blood ; 
Louis Napoleon proclaimed himself Prince President. This 
was the coup d'etat. 

The news of the coup d'etat took England by surprise. A 
shock went through the whole country. The almost universal 
voice of popular opinion condemned it as strongly as nearly all 
men of genuine enlightenment and feeling condemned it then 
and since. The Queen was particularly anxious that nothing 
should be said by the British ambassador to commit us to any 
approval of what had been done. On December 4 the Queen 
wrote to Lord John Kussell from Osborne, expressing her desire 
that Lord Normanby, our ambassador at Paris, should be in- 
structed to remain entirely passive, and say no word that might be 
misconstrued into approval of the action of the Prince President. 
Lord Normanby's reply to this despatch created a startling sen- 
sation. Our ambassador wrote to say that when he called on 
the French Minister for Foreign Affairs to inform him that he 
had been instructed by her Majesty's Government not to make 
any change in his relations with the French Government, the 
Minister, M. Turgot, told him that he had heard two days 
before from Count Walewski, the French ambassador in 
London, that Lord Palmerston had expressed to him his 
entire approval of what Louis Napoleon had done, and his 
conviction that the Prince President could not have acted 
otherwise. It would not be easy to exaggerate the sensation 
produced among Lord Palmerston's colleagues by this astound- 
ing piece of news. The Queen wrote at once to Lord John 
Poussell, asking him if he knew anything about the approval 
which ' the French Government pretend to have received ; ' 
declaring that she could not ' believe in the truth of the asser- 
tion, as such an approval given by Lord Palmerston would 
have been in complete contradiction to the line of strict neu- 
trality and passiveness which the Queen had expressed her 
desire to see followed with regard to the late convulsions at 
Paris.' Lord John Eussell replied that he had written to Lord 
Palmerston, ' saying that he presumed there was no truth in 
the report.' The reply of Lord Palmerston left no doubt that 



CH. X. PALMERSTON. 1 17 

Lord Palmerston had expressed to Count Walewski Ha 
approval of the coup d'etat. 

Lord Palmerston endeavoured to draw a distinction 
between the expressions of a Foreign Secretary in conversa- 
tion with an ambassador, and a formal declaration of opinion. 
But it is clear that the French ambassador did not understand 
Lord Palmerston to be merely indulging in the irresponsible 
gossip of private life, and that Lord Palmerston never said a 
word to impress him with the belief that their conversation had 
that colourless and unmeaning character. In any case it was 
surely a piece of singular indiscretion on the part of a Foreign 
Minister to give the French ambassador, even in private con- 
versation, an unqualified opinion in favour of a stroke of policy 
of which the British Government as a whole, and indeed with 
the one exception of Lord Palmerston, entirely disapproved. 
Lord John Eussell made up his mind. He came to the 
conclusion that he could no longer go on with Lord Palmer- 
ston as a colleague in the Foreign Office. The quarrel was 
complete ; Lord Palmerston ceased from that time to be 
Foreign Secretary, and his place was taken by Lord Granville. 
Seldom has a greater sensation been produced by the re- 
moval of a minister. The effect which was created all over 
Europe was probably just what Lord Palmerston would have 
desired ; the belief prevailed everywhere that he had been 
sacrificed to the monarchical and reactionary influences all over 
the Continent. The statesmen of Europe were under the im- 
pression that Lord Palmerston was put out of office as an evi- 
dence that England was about to withdraw from her former atti- 
tude of sympathy with the popular movements of the Continent. 

The meeting of Parliament took place on February 3 
following, 1852. It would be superfluous to say the keenest 
anxiety was felt to know the full reason of the sudden dis- 
missal. The House of Commons was not long left to wait 
for an explanation. Lord John Eussell made a long speech, 
in which he went into the whole history of the differences 
between Lord Palmerston and his colleagues ; and, what was 
more surprising to the House, into a history of the late 
Foreign Secretary's differences with his Sovereign, and the 
threat of dismissal which had so long been hanging over his 
head. The Prime Minister read to the House the Queen's 
memorandum. Lord John Eussell' s speech was a great suc- 
cess. Lord Palmerston' s was, even in the estimation oi hia 
closest friends, a failure. Palmerston seemed to have prac- 



Il8 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. X> 

tically no defence. He only went over again the points put 
by him in the correspondence already noticed ; contended that 
on the whole he had judged rightly of the French crisis, and 
that he could not help forming an opinion on it, and so forth. 
Of the Queen's memorandum he said nothing. He made up 
his mind that a dispute between a sovereign and a subject 
would be unbecoming of both ; and he passed over the memo- 
randum in deliberate silence. The almost universal opinion of 
the House of Commons and of the clubs was that Lord 
Palmerston' s career was closed. ' Palmerston is smashed ! ' 
was the common saying of the clubs. A night or two after 
the debate Lord Dalling met Mr. Disraeli on the staircase of 
the Eussian Embassy, and Disraeli remarked to him that 
'there was a Palmerston.' Lord Palmerston evidently did 
not think so. The letters he wrote to friends immediately 
after his fall show him as jaunty and full of confidence as 
ever. He was quite satisfied with the way things had gone. 
He waited calmly for what he called, a few days afterwards, 
1 My tit-for-tat with John Eussell,' which came about indeed 
sooner than even he himself could well have expected. 

All through the year 1852 the national mind of England 
was disturbed. The country was stirring itself in quite an 
unusual manner, in order that it might be ready for a possible 
and even an anticipated invasion from France. The Volun- 
teer movement sprang into sudden existence. All over the 
country corps of young volunteers were being formed. An 
immense amount of national enthusiasm accompanied and 
acclaimed the formation of the volunteer army, which 
received the sanction of the Crown early in the year, and 
thus became a national institution. The meaning of all 
this movement was explained by the steady progress of the 
Prince President of France to an imperial throne. The 
previous year had closed upon his coup d'etat. He had 
arrested, imprisoned, banished, or shot his principal enemies, 
and had demanded from the French people a Presidency 
for ten years, a Ministry responsible to the executive 
power — himself alone — and two political Chambers to be 
elected by universal suffrage. Nearly five hundred prisoners, 
untried before any tribunal, even that of a drum-head, 
had been shipped off to Cayenne. The streets of Paris 
had been soaked in blood. The President instituted a 
'pl&biscite, or vote of the whole people, and of course he got 
all he asked for. There was no arguing with the commander 



CH. X. PALMERSTON. 119 

of twenty legions, and of such legions as those that had ope- 
rated with terrible efficiency on the Boulevards. The Bona- 
partist Empire was restored. The President became Emperor, 
and Prince Louis Napoleon was Napoleon the Third. 

It would have been impossible that the English people 
could view all this without emotion and alarm. They could 
not see with indifference the rise of a new Napoleon to power. 
The one special characteristic of the Napoleonic principle was 
its hostility to England. The life of the great Napoleon in 
its greatest days had been devoted to the one purpose of 
humiliating England. His plans had been foiled by England. 
He owed his fall principally to England. He died a prisoner 
of England, and with his hatred of her embittered rather than 
appeased. It did not seem possible that a new Emperor 
Napoleon could arise without bringing a restoration of that 
hatred along with him. An invasion of England was not a 
likely event. But it was not by any means an impossible 
event. The more composedly one looks back to it now, the 
more he will be compelled to admit that it was at least on the 
cards. The feeling of national uneasiness and alarm was not a 
mere panic. There were five proj ects with which public opinion 
all over Europe specially credited Louis Napoleon when he 
began his imperial reign. One was a war with Kussia. Another 
was a war with Austria. A third was a war with Prussia. A 
fourth was the annexation of Belgium. The fifth was the inva- 
sion of England. Three of these projects were carried out. The 
fourth we know was in contemplation. Our combination with 
France in the first project probably put all serious thought of 
the fifth out of the head of the French Emperor. He got far 
more prestige out of an alliance with us than he could ever 
have got out of any quarrel with us ; and he had little or no 
risk. But we need not look upon the mood of England in 1852 
as one of idle and baseless panic. The same feeling broke 
into life again in 1859, when the Emperor of the French 
suddenly announced his determination to go to war with 
Austria. It was in this latter period indeed that the Volun- 
teer movement became a great national organisation. But in 
1852 the beginning of an army of volunteers was made ; and 
what is of more importance to the immediate business of our 
history, the Government determined to bring in a bill for the 
reorganisation of the national militia. 

Our militia was not in any case a body to be particularly 
proud of at that time. It had fallen into decay, and almost 



120 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. X. 

into disorganisation. Nothing could have been a more proper 
work for any Government than its restoration to efficiency 
and respectability. We had on our hands at the time one of 
our little wars — a Caffre war, which was protracted to a 
vexatious length, and which was not without serious military 
difficulty. It began in the December of 1850, and was not 
completely disposed of before the early part of 1853. We 
could not afford to have our defences in any defective con- 
dition. But it was an unfortunate characteristic of Lord 
John Eussell's Government that it attempted so much legis- 
lation, not because some particular scheme commended itself 
to the mature wisdom of the Ministry, but because something 
had to be done in a hurry to satisfy public opinion ; and the 
Government could not think of anything better at the moment 
than the first scheme that came to hand. Lord John Eussell 
accordingly introduced a Militia Bill, which was in the highest 
degree inadequate and unsatisfactory. The principal peculiarity 
of it was that it proposed to substitute a local militia for the 
regular force that had been in existence. Lord Palmerston 
saw great objections to this alteration, and urged them with 
much briskness and skill on the night N when Lord John 
Eussell explained his measure. When Palmerston began his 
speech, he probably intended to be merely critical as regarded 
points in the measure which were susceptible of amendment ; 
but as he went on he found more and more that he had the 
House with him. Every objection he made, every criticism 
he urged, almost every sentence he spoke, drew down increasing 
cheers. Lord Palmerston saw that the House was not only 
thoroughly with him on this ground, but thoroughly against 
the Government on various grounds. A few nights after he 
followed up his first success by proposing a resolution to sub- 
stitute the word ■ regular ' for the word ' local ' in the bill ; 
thus, in fact, to reconstruct the bill on an entirely different 
principle from that adopted by its framer. The effort was 
successful. The Peelites went with Palmerston ; the Protec- 
tionists followed him as well ; and the result was that 136 votes 
were given for the amendment, and only 125 against it. The 
Government were defeated by a majority of eleven. Lord John 
Eussell instantly announced that he could no longer continue 
in office, as he did not possess the confidence of the country. 
The announcement took the House by surprise. Palmer- 
ston did not expect any such result, he declared; but the 
revenge was doubtless sweet for all that. This was in February 



CH. x. PALMERSTON. 131 

1852 ; and it was only in the December of the previous year 
that Lord Palmerston was compelled to leave the Foreign 
Office by Lord John Eussell. 

The Eussell Ministry had done little and initiated less. 
It had carried on Peel's system by throwing open the markets 
to foreign as well as colonial sugar, and by the repeal of the 
Navigation Laws enabled merchants to employ foreign ships 
and seamen in the conveyance of their goods. It had made 
a mild and ineffectual effort at a Eeform Bill, and had feebly 
favoured attempts to admit Jews to Parliament. It sank from 
power with an unexpected collapse in which the nation felt 
small concern. Lord Palmerston did not come to power 
again at that moment. He might have gone in with Lord 
Derby if he had been so inclined. But Lord Derby, who, it 
may be said, had succeeded to that title on the death of his 
father in the preceding year, still talked of testing the policy 
of Free Trade at a general election, and of course Palmerston 
was not disposed to have anything to do with such a proposi- 
tion. Lord Derby tried various combinations in vain, and at 
last had to experiment with a Cabinet of undiluted Protection- 
ists. He had to take office, not because he wanted it, or because 
anyone in particular wanted him ; but simply and solely 
because there was no one else who could undertake the task. 
The Ministry which Lord Derby was able to form was not 
a strong one. Lord Palmerston described it as containing 
two men of mark, Derby and Disraeli, and a number of 
ciphers. It had not, except for these two, a single man of 
any political ability, and had hardly one of any political ex- 
perience. It had an able lawyer for Lord Chancellor, Lord 
St. Leonards, but he was nothing of a politician. The rest of 
the members of the Government were respectable country 
gentlemen. The head of the Government was remarkable for 
his dashing blunders as a politician quite as much as for his 
dashing eloquence. 

Concerning Mr. Disraeli himself it is not too much to say 
that many of his own party were rather more afraid of his 
genius than of the dulness of any of his colleagues. It is 
not a pleasant task in the best of circumstances to be at the 
head of a tolerated Ministry in the House of Commons : a 
Ministry which is in a minority, and only holds its place be- 
cause there is no one ready to relieve it of the responsibility 
of office. Earely indeed is the leadership of the House of 
Commons undertaken by anyone who has not previously held 
6 



122 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. X. 

office ; and Mr. Disraeli entered upon leadership and office at 
the same moment for the first time. He became Chancellor 
of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. 
Among the many gifts with which he was accredited by fame, 
not a single admirer had hitherto dreamed of including a 
capacity for the mastery of figures. In addition to all the 
ordinary difficulties of the Ministry of a minority there was, 
in this instance, the difficulty arising from the obscurity and 
inexperience of nearly all its members. Facetious persons 
dubbed the new Administration the ' Who ? Who ? Ministry.' 
The explanation of this odd nickname was found in a story 
then in circulation about the Duke of Wellington. The Duke, 
it was said, was anxious to hear from Lord Derby at the 
earliest moment all about the composition of his Cabinet. He 
was overheard asking the new Prime Minister in the House of 
Lords the names of his intended colleagues. The Duke was 
rather deaf, and, like most deaf persons, spoke in very loud 
tones, and of course had to be answered in tones also rather 
elevated. That which was meant for a whispered conversa- 
tion became audible to the whole House. As Lord Derby 
mentioned each name, the Duke asked in wonder and eager- 
ness, ' Who ? Who ? ' After each new name came the same 
inquiry. The Duke of Wellington had clearly never heard of 
most of the new Ministers before. The story went about ; 
and Lord Derby's Government was familiarly known as the 
' Who ? Who ? Ministry.' 

Lord Derby entered office with the avowed intention of 
testing the Protection question all over again. But he was 
no sooner in office than he found that the bare suggestion had 
immensely increased his difficulties. The Free Traders began 
to stand together again the moment Lord Derby gave his 
unlucky hint. Every week that passed over his head did 
something to show him the mistake he had made when he 
hampered himself with any such undertaking as the revival of 
the Protection question. Any chance the Government might 
otherwise have had of making effective head against their 
very trying difficulties was completely cut away from them. 
The Free Trade League was reorganised. A conference 
of Liberal members of the House of Commons was held at 
the residence of Lord John Kussell in Chesham Place, at 
which it was resolved to extract or extort from the Govern- 
ment a full avowal of their policy with regard to Protection 
and Free Trade. The feat would have been rather difficult of 



ch. x. PALMERSTON. 123 

accomplishment, seeing that the Government had absolutely 
no policy to offer on the subject, and were only hoping to be 
able to consult the country as one might consult an oracle. 
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he made his financial 
statement, accepted the increased prosperity of the few years 
preceding with an unction which showed that he at least had 
no particular notion of attempting to reverse the policy which 
had so greatly contributed to its progress. Mr. Disraeli 
pleased the Peelites and the Liberals much more by his state- 
ment than he pleased his chief or many of his followers. His 
speech indeed was very skilful. People were glad that one who 
had proved himself so clever with many things should have 
shown himself equal to the uncongenial and unwonted task of 
dealing with dry facts and figures. 

Mr. Disraeli merely proposed in his financial statement to 
leave things as he found them ; to continue the income-tax 
for another year, as a provisional arrangement pending that 
complete re-examination of the financial affairs of the country 
to which he intimated that he found himself quite equal at 
the proper time. No one could suggest any better course ; 
and the new Chancellor came off on the whole with flying 
colours. The Government on the whole did not do badly 
during this period of their probation. They introduced and 
carried a Militia Bill, for which they obtained the cordial 
support of Lord Palmerston ; and they gave a Constitution to 
New Zealand ; and then, in the beginning of July, the Parlia- 
ment was prorogued and the dissolution took place. The 
elections were signalised by very serious riots in many parts 
of the country. In Ireland particularly party passions ran 
high. The landlords and the police were on one side ; the 
priests and the popular party on the other ; and in several 
places there was some bloodshed. It was not in Ireland, how- 
ever, a question about Free Trade or Protection. The ques- 
tion which agitated the Irish constituencies was that of Tenant 
Eight in the first instance ; and there was also much bitter- 
ness of feeling remaining from the discussions on the 
Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. 

From the time of the elections nothing more was heard 
about Protection or about the possibility of getting a new 
trial for its principles. Mr. Disraeli not only threw Protection 
overboard, but boldly declared that no one could have sup- 
posed the Ministry had the slightest intention of proposing to 
bring back the laws that were repealed in 1846. In fact the 



124 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. *, 

time, he declared, had gone by when such exploded politics 
could even interest the people of this country. The elections 
did little or nothing for the Government. They gained a 
little, but they were still to be the Ministry of a minority ; a 
Ministry on sufferance. It was plain to every one that their 
existence as a Ministry was only a question of days. Specu- 
lation was already busy as to their successors ; and it was 
evident that a new Government could only be formed by some 
sort of coalition between the Whigs and the Peelites. 

Among the noteworthy events of the general election was 
the return of Macaulay to the House of Commons. Edinburgh 
elected him in a manner particularly complimentary to him 
and honourable to herself. He had for some years been 
absent from Parliament. Differences had arisen between him 
and his constituents, and the result of it was that at the 
general election of 1847 Macaulay was left third on the poll 
at Edinburgh. He felt this deeply. He might have easily 
found some other constituency ; but his wounded pride 
hastened a resolution he had for some time been forming to 
retire to a life of private literary labour. He therefore re- 
mained out of Parliament. In 1852 the movement of Edin- 
burgh towards him was entirely spontaneous. Edinburgh was 
anxious to atone for the error of which she had been guilty. 
Macaulay would go no further than to say that if Edinburgh 
spontaneouslyelectedhim,he should deem it a very high honour, 
but he would not do anything whatever to court favour. He 
did not want to be elected to Parliament, he said ; he was 
very happy in his retirement. Edinburgh elected him on 
those terms. He was not long allowed by his health to serve 
her ; but so long as he remained in the House of Commons it 
was as member for Edinburgh. 

On September 14, 1852, the Duke of Wellington died. 
His end was singularly peaceful. He fell quietly asleep about 
a quarter-past three in the afternoon in Walmer Castle, and 
he did not wake any more. He was a very old man — in his 
eighty-fourth year — and his death had naturally been looked 
for as an event certain to come soon. Yet when it did come 
thus naturally and peacefully, it created a profound public 
emotion. No other man in our time ever held the position in 
England which the Duke oi Wellington had occupied for more 
than a whole generation. The place he had won for himself 
was absolutely unique. His great deeds belonged to a past 
time. He was hardly anything of a statesman ; he knew little 



CH. X. PALMERS TON. 125 

and cared less about what may be called statecraft ; and as 
an administrator he had made many mistakes. But the trust 
which the nation had in him as a counsellor was absolutely 
unlimited. It never entered into the mind of anyone to sup- 
pose that the Duke of Wellington was actuated in any step 
he took, or advice he gave, by any feeling but a desire for the 
good of the State. His loyalty to the Sovereign had some- 
thing antique and touching in it. There was a blending of 
personal affection with the devotion of a state servant which 
lent a certain romantic dignity to the demeanour and cha- 
racter of one who otherwise had but little of the poetical or 
the sentimental in his nature. In the business of politics he 
had but one prevailing anxiety, and that was that the Queen's 
Government should be satisfactorily carried on. He gave up 
again and again his own most cherished convictions, most 
ingrained prejudices, in order that he might not stand in the 
way of the Queen's Government and the proper carrying of it 
on. This simple fidelity, sometimes rather whimsically dis- 
played, stood him often in stead of an exalted statesmanship, 
and enabled him to extricate the Government and the nation 
from difficulties in which a political insight far more keen 
than his might have failed to prove a guide. 

It was for this simple and unswerving devotion to the 
national good that the people of England admired and 
revered him. He had not what would be called a loveable 
temperament, and yet the nation loved him. He was cold 
and brusque in manner, and seemed in general to have 
hardly a gleam of the emotional in him. This was not 
because he lacked affections. On the contrary, his affections 
and his friendships were warm and enduring ; and even in 
public he had more than once given way to outbursts of 
emotion such as a stranger would never have expected from 
one of that cold and rigid demeanour. When Sir Robert 
Peel died, Wellington spoke of him in the House of Lords with 
the tears which he did not even try to control running down 
his cheeks. But in his ordinary bearing there was little of 
the manner that makes a man a popular idol. He was not 
brilliant or dashing, or emotional or graceful. He was dry, 
cold, self-contained. Yet the people loved him and trusted in 
him ; loved him perhaps especially because they so trusted in 
him. The nation was not ungrateful. It heaped honours on 
Wellington; it would have heaped more on him if it knew 
how. It gave him its almost unqualified admiration. On his 



126 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. X. 

death it tried to give him such a public funeral as hero never 
had. 

The new Parliament was called together in November. It 
brought into public life in England a man who afterwards made 
some mark in our politics, and whose intellect and debating 
power seemed at one time to promise him a position inferior to 
that of hardly anyone in the House of Commons. This was 
Mr. Kobert Lowe, who had returned from one of the Australian 
colonies to enter political life in his native country. Mr. Lowe 
was a scholar of a highly cultured order ; and, despite some 
serious defects of delivery, he proved to be a debater of the 
very highest class, especially gifted with the weapons of 
sarcasm, scorn, and invective. He was a Liberal in the 
intellectual sense ; he was opposed to all restraints on educa- 
tion and on the progress of a career ; but he had a detestation 
for democratic doctrines which almost amounted to a mania. 
With the whole force of a temperament very favourable to 
intellectual scorn he despised alike the rural Tory and the 
town Eadical. His opinions were generally rather negative 
than positive. He did not seem to have any very positive 
opinions of any kind where politics were concerned. He was 
governed by a detestation of abstractions and sentimentalities, 
and ' views ' of all sorts. If contempt for the intellectual 
weaknesses of an opposing party or doctrine could have made 
a great politician, Mr. Lowe would have won that name. In 
politics, however, criticism is not enough. One must be able 
to originate, to mould the will of others, to compromise, to 
lead while seeming to follow, often to follow while seeming to 
lead. Of gifts like these Mr. Lowe had no share. He never 
became more than a great Parliamentary critic of the acrid 
and vitriolic style. 

Almost immediately on the assembling of the new 
Parliament, Mr. Villiers brought forward a resolution not 
merely pledging the House of Commons to a Free Trade 
policy, but pouring out a sort of censure on all who had 
hitherto failed to recognise its worth. This step was thought 
necessary, and was indeed made necessary by the errors of which 
Lord Derby had been guilty, and the preposterous vapourings 
of some of his less responsible followers. If the resolution 
had been passed, the Government must have resigned. But 
Lord Palmerston devised an amendment which afforded them 
the means of a more or less honourable retreat. This resolu- 
tion pledged the House to the ' policy of unrestricted com« 



ch. x. PALMERSTON. . 127 

petition firmly maintained and prudently extended ; ' but 
recorded no panegyric of the legislation of 1846, and conse- 
quent condemnation of those who opposed that legislation. 
The amendment was accepted by all but the small band of 
irreconcilable Protectionists : 468 voted for it ; only 53 against 
it ; and the moan of Protection was made. 

Still the Government existed only on sufferance. There 
was a general expectation that the moment Mr. Disraeli came 
to set out a genuine financial scheme the fate of the Administra- 
tion would be decided. So th e event proved. Mr. Disraeli made 
a financial statement which showed remarkable capacity for 
dealing with figures. The skill with which the Chancellor of 
the Exchequer explained his measures and tossed his figures 
about convinced many even of his strongest opponents that he 
had the capacity to make a good budget if he only were 
allowed to do so by the conditions of his party's existence. 
But his Cabinet had come into office under special obligations 
to the country party and the farmers. They could not avoid 
making some experiment in the way of special legislation for 
the farmers. They had at the very least to put on an appear- 
ance of domg something for them. When Mr. Disraeli under- 
took to favour the country interest and the farmers, he must 
have known only too well that he was setting all the Free 
Traders and Peelites against him ; and he knew at the same time 
that if he neglected the country party he was cutting the ground 
from beneath his feet. The principle of his budget was the 
reduction of the malt duties and the increase of the inhabited 
house duty. That reduction created a deficit, in order to 
supply which the inhabited house duty had to be doubled. The 
scheme was a complete failure. The farmers did not care much 
about the concession which had been made in their favour ; 
those who would have had to pay for it in double taxation were 
bitterly indignant. The Whigs, the Free Traders, the Peelites, 
and such independent members or unattached members as Mr. 
Lowe and Mr. Bernal Osborne all fell on Mr. Disraeli. It 
became a combat a outrance. It well suited Mr. Disraeli's 
peculiar temperament. During the whole of his Parlia- 
mentary career he never fought so well as when he was 
free to indulge to the full the courage of despair. 

The debate was one of the finest of its kind ever heard in 
Parliament during our time. The excitement on both sides 
was intense. The rivalry was hot and eager. Mr. Disraeli 
was animated by all the power of desperation, and was 



128 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. X. 

evidently in a mood neither to give nor to take quarter. The 
House had hardly heard the concluding word of Disraeli's bitter 
and impassioned speech, when at two o'clock in the morning 
Mr. Gladstone leaped to his feet to answer him. Then began 
that long Parliamentary duel which only knew a truce when, 
at the close of the session of 1876, Mr. Disraeli crossed the 
threshold of the House of Commons for the last time, thence- 
forward to take his place among the peers as Lord Beacons- 
field. The rivalry of this first heated and eventful night was 
a splendid display. Those who had thought it impossible that 
any impression could be made upon the House after the speech 
of Mr. Disraeli, had to acknowledge that a yet greater im- 
pression was produced by the unprepared reply of Mr. Glad- 
stone. The House divided about four o'clock in the morning, 
and the Government were left in a minority of nineteen. That 
day the resignation of the Ministry was formally placed in the 
hands of the Queen. In a few days after, the Coalition Ministry 
was formed. Lord Aberdeen was Prime Minister ; Lord John 
Bussell took the Foreign Office ; Lord Palmerston became Home 
Secretary ; Mr. Gladstone was Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
The public were a good deal surprised that Lord Palmerston 
had taken such a place as that of Home Secretary. His 
name had been identified with the foreign policy of England, 
and it was not supposed that he felt the slightest interest 
in the ordinary business of the Home Department. But 
Palmerston would not consent to be Foreign Secretary on 
any terms but his own, and these terms were then out of the 
question. 

The principal interest felt in the new Government was 
centred in the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. 
Gladstone was still a young man in the Parliamentary sense 
at least. He was but forty- three. His career had been in 
every way remarkable. He had entered public life at a very 
early age. He had been a distinguished debater in the House 
of Commons ever since he was one-and-twenty. Mr. Glad- 
stone was born in Liverpool, and was the son of Sir John 
Gladstone, a Scotchman, who founded a great house in the 
seaport of the Mersey* He entered Parliament when very 
young as a protege of the Newcastle family, and he soon 
faithfully attached himself to Sir Bobert Peel. His knowledge 
of finance, his thorough appreciation of the various needs of a 
nation's commerce and business, his middle-class origin, all 
brought him into natural affinity with his great leader. He 



ch. x. PALMERSTON. 129 

became a Free Trader with Peel. He was not in the House of 
Commons, oddly enough, during the session when the Free 
Trade battle was fought and won. As he had changed his 
opinions with his leader, he felt a reluctance to ask the support 
of the Newcastle family for the borough which he had pre- 
viously represented by virtue of their influence. But except for 
that short interval his whole career may be pronounced one 
long Parliamentary success. He was from the very outset 
recognised as a brilliant debater, and as one who promised to 
be an orator ; but the first really great speech made by Mr. Glad- 
stone was the reply to Mr. Disraeli on the memorable December 
morning which we have just described. That speech put him 
in the very foremost rank of English orators. Then perhaps 
he first showed to the full the one great quality in which as a 
Parliamentary orator he has never had a rival in our time : the 
readiness which seems to require no preparation, but can mar- 
shal all its arguments as if by instinct at a given moment, 
and the fluency which can pour out the most eloquent language 
as freely as though it were but the breath of the nostrils. 
When, shortly after the formation of the Coalition Ministry, 
Mr. Gladstone delivered his first budget, it was regarded as a 
positive curiosity of financial exposition. It was a perform - 
ance that belonged to the department of the fine arts. The 
speech occupied several hours, and assuredly no listener 
wished it the shorter by a single sentence. Each time that he 
essayed the same task subsequently he accomplished just the 
same success. Mr. Gladstone's first oratorical qualification was 
his exquisite voice. Such a voice would make common-place 
seem interesting and lend something of fascination to dulness 
itself. It was singularly pure, clear, resonant, and sweet. The 
orator never seemed to use the slightest effort or strain in filling 
any hall and reaching the ear of the farthest among the 
audience. It was not a loud voice or of great volume ; but 
strong, vibrating, and silvery. The words were always aided 
by energetic action and by the deep gleaming eyes of the 
orator. It is not to be denied that his wonderful gift of 
words sometimes led him astray. It was often such a fluency 
as that of a torrent on which the orator was carried away. 
Gladstone had to pay for his fluency by being too fluent. 
Sometimes he involved his sentence in parenthesis within 
parenthesis until the ordinary listener began to think extrica- 
tion an impossibility ; but the orator never failed to unravel 
6* 



130 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. * 

all the entanglements and to bring the passage out to a clear 
and legitimate conclusion. 

Often, however, this superb exuberant rush of words added 
indescribable strength to the eloquence of the speaker. In 
passages of indignant remonstrance or denunciation, when 
word followed word, and stroke came down upon stroke, with 
a wealth of resource that seemed inexhaustible, the very 
fluency and variety of the speaker overwhelmed his audience. 
Interruption only gave him a new stimulus, and appeared to 
supply him with fresh resources of argument and illustration. 
His retorts leaped to his lips. Mr. Gladstone had not much 
humour of the playful kind, but he had a certain force of 
sarcastic and scornful rhetoric. He was always terribly in 
earnest. Whether the subject were great or small, he threw 
his whole soul into it. Once, in addressing a schoolboy 
gathering, he told his young listeners that if a boy ran he 
ought always to run as fast as he could ; if he jumped, he 
ought always to jump as far as he could. He illustrated his 
maxim in his own career. He had no idea apparently of run- 
ning or jumping in such measure as happened to please the 
fancy of the moment. He always exercised his splendid 
powers to the uttermost strain. Probably no one, past or pre- 
sent, had in combination so many gifts of voice, manner, 
fluency and argument, style, reason and passion, as Mr. 
Gladstone. 

Mr. Gladstone grew slowly into Liberal convictions. At 
the time when he joined the Coalition Ministry he was still 
regarded as one who had scarcely left the camp of Toryism, 
and who had only joined that Ministry because it was a coali- 
tion. Years after he was applied to by the late Lord Derby 
to join a Ministry formed by him ; and it was not supposed 
that there was anything unreasonable in the proposition. The 
first impulse towards Liberal principles was given to his mind 
probably by his change with his leader from Protection to 
Free Trade. When a man like Gladstone saw that his 
traditional principles and those of his party had broken down 
in any one direction it was but natural that he should begin to 
question their endurance in other directions. When Mr. 
Gladstone came to be convinced that there was no such law as 
the Protection principle at all ; that it was a mere sham ; 
that to believe in it was to be guilty of an economic heresy — 
then it was impossible for him not to begin questioning the 
genuineness of the whole system of political thought of which 



CH. X. PALMERSTON. 131 

it formed but a part. Perhaps, too, he was impelled towards 
Liberal principles at home by seeing what the effects of 
opposite doctrines had been abroad. He rendered memorable 
service to the Liberal cause of Europe by his eloquent protest 
against the brutal treatment of Baron Poerio and other 
Liberals of Naples who were imprisoned by the Neapolitan 
king — a protest which Garibaldi declared to have sounded the 
first trumpet-call of Italian liberty. In rendering service to 
Liberalism and to Europe he rendered service also to his own 
intelligence. He helped to set free his own spirit as well as 
the Neapolitan people. The common taunts addressed to 
public men who have changed their opinions were hardly ever 
applied to him. Even his enemies felt that the one idea 
always inspired him — a conscientious anxiety to do the right 
thing. The worst thing that was said of him was that 
he was too impulsive, and that his intelligence was too 
restless. He was an essayist, a critic, a Homeric scholar ; 
a dilettante in art, music, and old china ; he was a theological 
controversialist ; he was a political economist, a financier, a 
practical administrator whose gift of mastering details has 
hardly ever been equalled ; he was a statesman and an orator. 
No man could attempt so many things and not occasionally 
make himself the subject of a sneer. The intense gravity and 
earnestness of Gladstone's mind always, however, saved him 
from the special penalty of such versatility. 

As yet, however, he is only the young statesman who was 
the other day the hope of the mone solemn and solid Con- 
servatives, and in whom they have not even yet entirely ceased 
to put some faith. The Coalition Ministry was so formed 
that it was not supposed a man necessarily nailed his colours 
to any mast when he joined it. More than one of Gladstone's 
earliest friends and political associates had a part in it. The 
Ministry might undoubtedly be called an Administration of All 
the Talents. Except the late Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, it 
included almost every man of real ability who belonged to 
either of the two great parties of the State. The Manchester 
School had, of course, no place there ; but they were not likely 
just yet to be recognised as constituting one of the elements 
out of which even a Coalition Ministry might be composed. 



132 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. XL 

CHAPTEE XL 

SHE CEIMEAN WAB, 

For forty years England had been at peace. There had 
indeed been little wars here and there with some of her 
Asiatic and African neighbours, but from Waterloo downward 
England knew no real war. The new generation were grow- 
ing up in a happy belief that wars were things of the past for 
us, like the wearing of armour. During all the convulsions 
of the Continent, England had remained undisturbed. A new 
school as well as a new generation had sprung up. This 
school, full of faith but full of practical shrewd logic as well, 
was teaching with great eloquence and effect that the practice 
of settling international controversy by the sword was costly, 
barbarous, and blundering as well as wicked. The practice of 
the duel in England had utterly gone out. Why then should 
it be unreasonable to believe that war among nations might 
soon become equally obsolete ? 

Such certainly was the faith of a great many intelligent 
persons at the time when the Coalition Ministry was formed. 
The majority tacitly acquiesced in the belief without thinking 
much about it. They had never in their time seen England 
engaged in European war ; and it was natural to assume that 
what they had never seen they were never likely to see. Suddenly 
all this happy quiet faith was disturbed by the Eastern * question * 
— the question of what to do with the East of Europe. It was 
certain that things could not remain as they then were, and 
nothing else was certain. The Ottoman power hadbeen settled 
during many centuries in the South-east of Europe. The 
Turk had many of the strong qualities and even the virtues of 
a great warlike conqueror ; but he had no capacity or care for 
the arts of peace. He never thought of assimilating himself 
to those whom he had conquered, or them to him. The Turks 
were not, as a rule, oppressive to the races that lived under 
them. They were not habitual persecutors of the faiths they 
deemed heretical. Every now and then, indeed, some sudden 
fierce outburst of fanatical cruelty towards some of the subject 
sects horrified Europe, and reminded her that the conqueror 
who had settled himself down in her south-eastern corner was 
still a barbarian who had no right or place in civilised life. 



ch. xi. THE CRIMEAN WAR, 133 

But as a rule the Turk was disposed to look with disdainful 
composure on what he considered the religious follies of the 
heretical races who did not believe in the Prophet. They were 
objects of his scornful pity rather than of his anger. 

At one time there is no doubt that all the powers of civilised 
Europe would gladly have seen the Turk driven out of our 
Continent. But the Turk was powerful for a long series of 
generations, and it seemed for a while rather a question 
whether he would not send the Europeans out of their own 
grounds. When he began to decay, and when his aggressive 
strength was practically all gone, it might have been thought 
that the Western Powers would then have managed some- 
how to get rid of him. But in the meantime the condition of 
Europe had greatly changed. No one not actually subject to 
the Turk was afraid of him any more ; and other States had 
arisen strong for aggression. The uncertainties of these 
States as to the intentions of their neighbours and each other 
proved a better bulwark for the Turks than any warlike strength 
of their own could any longer have furnished. The growth of 
the Kussian empire was of itself enough to change the whole 
conditions of the problem. 

Nothing in our times has been more remarkable than the 
sudden growth of Eussia. A few generations ago Eussia was 
literally an inland State. She was shut up in the heart of 
Eastern Europe as if in a prison. The genius, the craft and 
the audacity of Peter the Great first broke the narrow bounds 
set to the Eussia of his day, and extended her frontier to the sea. 
He was followed after a reign or two by the greatest woman 
probably who ever sat on a throne, Elizabeth of England not 
even excepted. Catherine the Second so ably followed the 
example of Peter the Great, that she extended the Eussian fron- 
tiers hi directions which he had not had opportunity to stretch 
to. By the time her reign was done, Eussia was one of the 
great powers of Europe, entitled to enter into negotiations on 
a footing of equality with the proudest States of the Conti- 
nent. Unlike Turkey, Eussia had always shown a yearning 
after the latest developments of science and of civilisation. 
A nation that tries to appear more civilised than it really is 
ends very often by becoming more civilised than its neigh- 
bours ever thought it likely to be. 

The wars against Napoleon brought Eussia into close 
alliance with England, Austria, Prussia, and other Euro- 
pean States of old and advanced civilisation. She was 



134 ^ SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch xi. 

recognised as a valuable friend and a most formidable 
enemy. Gradually it became evident that sbe could be 
aggressive as well as conservative. After a while it grew to 
be a fixed conviction in the mind of the Liberalism of Western 
Europe that Eussia was the greatest obstacle then existing in 
civilisation to the spread of popular ideas. The Turk was 
comparatively harmless in that sense. He was well content 
now, so much had his ancient ambition shrunk and his ancient 
war spirit gone out, if his strong and restless neighbour would 
only let him alone. But he was brought at more than one point 
into especial collision with Eussia. Many of the provinces he 
ruled over in European Turkey were of Sclavonian race, and 
of the religion of the Greek Church. They were thus affined 
by a double tie to the Eussian people, and therefore the 
manner in which Turkey dealt with those provinces was a 
constant source of dispute between Eussia and her. The 
Eussians are a profoundly religious people. A Eussian 
emperor could not be loved if he did not declare his undying 
resolve to be the protector of the Christian populations of 
Turkey. Much of this was probably sincere and single-minded 
on the part of the Eussian people and most of the Eussian 
politicians. But the other States of Europe began to suspect 
that mingled up with benign ideas of protecting the Christian 
populations of Turkey might be a desire to extend the frontier 
of Eussia to the southward in a new direction. Europe had 
seen by what craft and what audacious enterprises Eussia had 
managed to extend her empire to the sea in other quarters ; it 
began to be commonly believed that her next object of ambition 
would be the possession of Constantinople and the Bosphorus. 
It was reported that a will of Peter the Great had left it as an 
injunction to his successors to turn all the efforts of their 
policy towards that object. The particular document which 
was believed to be a will of Peter the Great enjoined on all 
succeeding Eussian sovereigns never to relax in the extension 
of their territory northward on the Baltic and southward on 
the Black Sea shores, and to encroach as far as possible in the 
direction of Constantinople and the Indies. It therefore 
seemed to be the natural business of other European powers to 
see that the defects of the Ottoman Government, such as they 
were, should not be made an excuse for helping Eussia to 
secure the objects of her special ambition. England of course, 
above all the rest, had an interest in watching over every 
movement that threatened in any way to interfere with the 



ch. xi. THE CRIMEAN WAR. 135 

highway to India ; still more her peaceful and secure posses- 
sion of India itself. England, Eussia and Turkey were alike 
in one respect : they were all Asiatic as well as European 
powers. But the days of Turkey's interfering with any great 
State were long over. On the contrary, there seemed some- 
thing like a natural antagonism between England and Eussia 
in the East. The Eussians were extending their frontier 
towards that of our Indian empire. Our officers and diplo- 
matic emissaries reported that they were continually confronted 
by the evidences of Eussian intrigue in Central Asia. We have 
already seen how much influence the real or supposed intrigues 
of Eussia had in directing our policy in Afghanistan. It was 
in great measure out of these alarms that there grew up 
among certain statesmen and classes in this country the con- 
viction that the maintenance of the integrity of the Turkish 
empire was part of the national duty of England. 

Sharply defined, the condition of things was this : Eussia, 
by reason of her sympathy of religion or race with Turkey's 
Christian populations, was brought into chronic antagonism with 
Turkey ; England, by reason of her Asiatic possessions, was kept 
in just the same state of antagonism to Eussia. A crisis at last 
arose that threw England into direct hostility with Eussia. 

That crisis came about during the later years of the reign 
of the Emperor Nicholas. He saw its opening, but not its 
close. Nicholas was a man of remarkable character. He 
had many of the ways of an Asiatic despot. He had a strong 
ambition, a fierce and fitful temper, a daring but sometimes 
too a vacillating will. He had many magnanimous and noble 
qualities, and moods of sweetness and gentleness. A certain 
excitability ran through the temperament of all his house, 
which, in some of its members, broke into actual madness. 
The Emperor at one time was very popular in England. He 
had visited the Queen, and he had impressed everyone by his 
noble presence, his lofty stature, his singular personal beauty, 
his blended dignity and familiarity of manner. He talked as 
if he had no higher ambition than to be in friendly alliance 
with England. When he wished to convey his impression 
of the highest degree of personal loyalty and honour, he 
always spoke of ' the word of an English gentleman.' There 
can, indeed, be little doubt that the Emperor was sincerely 
anxious to keep on terms of cordial friendship with England ; 
and, what is more, had no idea until the very last that the 
way he was walking was one which England could not con- 
sent to tread. His brother and predecessor had been in close 



136 A SHORT HISTORY OF OLR OWN TIMES. ch. XI. 

alliance with England ; his own ideal hero was the Duke of 
Wellington ; he had made up his mind that when the division 
of the spoils of Turkey came about, England and he could 
best consult for their own interests and the peace of the world 
by making the appropriation a matter of joint arrangement. 

When he visited England in 1844, for the second time, 
Nicholas had several conversations with the Duke of Wellington 
and with Lord Aberdeen, then Foreign Secretary, about 
Turkey and her prospects, and what would be likely to happen 
in the case of her dissolution, which he believed to be im- 
minent. When he returned to Eussia he had a memorandum 
drawn up by Count Nesselrode, his Chancellor, embodying the 
views which, according to Nicholas's impressions, were enter- 
tained alike by him and by the British statesmen with whom 
he had been conversing. The memorandum spoke of the 
imperative necessity of Turkey being made to keep her engage- 
ments and to treat her Christian subjects with toleration and 
mildness. On such conditions it was laid down that England 
and Eussia must alike desire her preservation ; but the docu- 
ment proceeded to say that nevertheless these States could 
not conceal from themselves the fact that the Ottoman 
empire contained within itself many elements of dissolution, 
and that unforeseen events might at any time hasten its 
fall. ' In the uncertainty which hovers over the future a 
single fundamental idea seems to admit of a really practical 
application ; that is, that the danger which may result from a 
catastrophe in Turkey will be much diminished if in the event 
of its occurring Eussia and England have come to an under- 
standing as to the course to be taken by them in common. 
That understanding will be the more beneficial inasmuch as 
it will have the full assent of Austria, between whom and 
Eussia there already exists an entire accord.' This document 
was sent to London and kept in the archives of the Foreign 
Office. The Emperor of Eussia evidently believed that his 
views were shared by English statesmen. Therefore, it is to 
be regretted that the English statesmen should have listened 
to Nicholas without saying something very distinct to show 
that they were not admitting or accepting any combination of 
purpose ; or that they should have received his memorandum 
without some clear disclaimer of their being in any way bound 
by its terms. We could scarcely have been too emphatic or 
too precise in conveying to the Emperor of Eussia our deter- 
mination to have nothing to do with any such conspiracy. 



ch. xi. THE CRIMEAN WAR, 137 

Time went on, and the Emperor thought he saw an occasion 
for still more clearly explaining his plans and for reviving the 
supposed understanding with England. Lord Aberdeen came 
into office as Prime Minister of this country ; Lord Aberdeen, 
who was Foreign Secretary when Nicholas was in England 
in 1844. In January 1853, the Emperor had several con- 
versations with our minister, Sir G. Hamilton Seymour, about 
the future of Turkey and the arrangements it might be 
necessary for England and Eussia to make regarding it. The 
conversations were renewed again and again afterwards. They 
all tended towards the one purpose. The Emperor urged that 
England and Eussia ought to make arrangements beforehand 
as to the inheritance of the Ottoman in Europe — before what 
he regarded as the approaching and inevitable day when 
the ' sick man ' — so the Emperor called Turkey — must come 
to die. If only England and Eussia could arrive at an under- 
standing on the subject, he declared that it was a matter of 
indifference to him what other powers might think or say. 
He spoke of the several millions of Christians in Turkey 
whose rights he was called upon to watch over, and he re- 
marked — the remark is of significance — that the right of 
watching over them was secured to him by treaty. The 
Emperor was evidently under the impression that the in- 
terests of England and of Eussia were united in this pro- 
posed transaction. He had no idea of anything but the most 
perfect frankness so far as we were concerned. But the 
English Government never, after the disclosures of Sir 
Hamilton Seymour, put any faith in Nicholas. They regarded 
him as nothing better than a plotter. The English Minister 
and the English Government could only answer the Emperor's 
overtures by saying that they did not think it quite usual to 
enter into arrangements for the spoliation of a friendly power, 
and that England had no desire to succeed to any of the 
possessions of Turkey. 

The conversations with Sir Hamilton Seymour formed but 
an episode in the history of the events that were then going on. 
There had long been going on a dispute about the Holy Places 
in Palestine. The claims of the Greek Church and those of 
the Latin Church were in antagonism there. The Emperor of 
Eussia was the protector of the Greek Church ; the Kings of 
France had long had the Latin Church under their protection. 
The Holy Places to which the Latins raised a claim were 
the great Church in Bethlehem; the Sanctuary of the 



138 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xi. 

Nativity ; the tomb of the Virgin ; the Stone of Anointing ; 
the Seven Arches of the Virgin in the Church of the Holy 
Sepulchre. In the reign of Francis the First of France, a 
treaty was made with the Sultan by which France was 
acknowledged the protector of the Holy Places in Palestine, 
and of the monks of the Latin Church who took on them- 
selves the care of the sacred monuments and memorials. But 
the Greek Church afterwards obtained firmans from the 
Sultan ; and the Greeks claimed on the strength of these con- 
cessions that they had as good a right as the Latins to take 
care of the Holy Places. Disputes were always arising, and 
of course these were aggravated by the fact that France was 
supposed to be concerned in the protection of one set of dis- 
putants and Eussia in that of another. The claims at length 
came to be identified with the States which respectively pro- 
tected them. An advantage of the smallest kind gained by 
the Latins was viewed as an insult to Eussia ; a concession tc 
the Greeks was a snub to France. 

It was France which first stirred the controversy in the 
time just before the Crimean War. The French ambassador, 
M. de Lavalette, is said to have threatened that a French fleet 
should appear off Jaffa, and even hinted at a French occupa- 
tion of Jerusalem, ' when,' as he significantly put it, ' we 
should have all the sanctuaries.' The cause of all this energy 
is not far to seek. The Prince President had only just suc- 
ceeded in procuring himself to be installed as Emperor ; and 
he was very anxious to distract the attention of Frenchmen 
from domestic politics to some showy and startling policy 
abroad. This controversy between the Church of the East 
and the Church of the West tempted him into activity as one 
that seemed likely to give him an opportunity of displaying 
the power of France and of the new system without any 
very great danger or responsibility. 

The key of the whole controversy out of which the Eastern 
war arose, and out of which indeed all subsequent complications 
in the East came as well, was said to be found in a clause of 
the Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji. The Treaty of Kutchuk- 
Kainardji was made on July 10, 1774, between the Otto- 
man Porte and Catherine II. of Eussia after a war in 
which the arms of the great Empress had been completely 
victorious. The seventh clause declared that the Sublime 
Porte promised ' to protect constantly the Christian religion 
and its churches; and also to allow the minister of the 



CH. xi. THE CRIMEAN WAR, 139 

Imperial Court of Eussia to make on all occasions represen- 
tations as well in favour of the new church in Constantinople, 
of which mention will be made in the fourteenth article, as in 
favour of those who officiate therein, promising to take such 
representations into due consideration as being made by a con- 
fidential functionary of a neighbouring and sincerely friendly 
power. ' Not much possibility of misunderstanding about these 
words, one might feel inclined to say. We turn then to the 
fourteenth article alluded to, in order to discover if in its 
wording lies the perplexity of meaning which led to such mo- 
mentous and calamitous results. "We find that by this article 
it is simply permitted to the Court of Eussia to build a public 
church of the Greek rite in the Galata quarter of Constanti- 
nople, in addition to the chapel built in the house of the min- 
ister ; and it is declared that the new church ' shall be always 
under the protection of the ministers of the (Eussian) empire, 
and shielded from all obstruction and all damage.' Here, then, 
we seem to have two clauses of the simplest meaning and by 
no means of first-class importance. The latter clause allows 
Eussia to build a new church in Constantinople ; the former 
allows the Eussian minister to make representations to the 
Porte on behalf of the church and of those who officiate in it. 
"What difference of opinion, it may be asked, could possibly 
arise ? The difference was this : Eussia claimed a right of pro- 
tectorate over all the Christians of the Greek Church in Turkey 
as the consequence of the seventh clause of the treaty. She 
insisted that when Turkey gave her a right to interfere on 
behalf of the worshippers in one particular church, the same 
right extended so far as to cover all the worshippers of the same 
denomination in every part of the Ottoman dominions. The 
great object of Eussia throughout all the negotiations that 
preceded the Crimean War was to obtain from the Porte an ad- 
mission of the existence of such a protectorate. Such an ac- 
knowledgment would, in fact, have made the Emperor of Eussia 
the patron and all but the ruler of by far the larger proportion 
of the populations of European Turkey. The Sultan would 
no longer have been master in his own dominions. The Greek 
Christians would naturally have regarded the Eussian Em- 
peror's right of intervention on their behalf as constituting a 
protectorate far more powerful than the nominal rule of the 
Sultan. They would have known that the ultimate decision 
of any dispute in which they were concerned rested with the 
Emperor, and not with the Sultan ; and they would soon have 



i 4 o A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. XI. 

come to look upon the Emperor, and not the Sultan, as their 
actual sovereign. 

Now it does not seem likely on the face of things that any 
ruler of a state would have consented to hand over to a more 
powerful foreign monarch such a right over the great majority 
of his subjects. Still, if Turkey, driven to her last defences, 
had no alternative but to make such a concession, the Emperors 
of Eussia could not be blamed for insisting that it should be 
carried out. The terms of the article in the treaty itself cer- 
tainly do not seem to admit of such a construction. Whenever 
we find Eussia putting a claim into plain words, we find Eng- 
land, through her ministers, refusing to give it their acknow- 
ledgment. Diplomacy, therefore, was powerless to do good 
during all the protracted negotiations that set in, before the 
Crimean War, for the plain reason that the only object of the 
Emperor of Eussia in entering upon negotiation at all was 
one which the other European powers regarded as absolutely 
inadmissible. 

The dispute about the Holy Places was easily settled. 
The Porte cared very little about the matter, and was willing 
enough to come to any fair terms by which the whole contro- 
versy could be got rid of. But the demands of Eussia went 
on just as before. Prince Mentschikoff, a fierce, rough man, 
unable or unwilling to control his temper, was sent with 
demands to Constantinople. Mentschikoff brought his pro- 
posals with him cut and dry in the form of a convention which 
he called upon Turkey to accept without more ado. Turkey 
refused, and Prince Mentschikoff withdrew in real or affected 
rage, and presently the Emperor Nicholas sent two divisions 
of his army across the Pruth to take possession of the Danubian 
principalities. 

Diplomacy, however, did not give in even then. A note 
was concocted at Vienna which Eussia at once offered to 
accept. The four great Powers who were carrying on the 
business of mediation were at first quite charmed with the 
note, with the readiness of Eussia to accept it, and with 
themselves ; and but for the interposition of Lord Stratford 
de Eedcliffe, our ambassador at Constantinople, who showed 
great acuteness and force of character through all these nego- 
tiations, it seems highly probable that it would have been 
agreed to by all the parties concerned. Lord Stratford, how- 
ever, "saw plainly that the note was a virtual concession to 
Eussia of all that she specially desired to have, and all that 



CH. xi. THE CRIMEAN WAR. 141 

Europe was unwilling to concede to her. It contained, for 
instance, words which declared that the Government of 
his Majesty the Sultan would remain 'faithful to the letter 
and the spirit of the stipulations of the Treaties of Kainardji 
and of Adrianople, relative to the protection of the Christian 
religion.' These words, in a note drawn up for the purpose 
of satisfying the Emperor of Eussia, could not but be 
understood as recognising the interpretation of the Treaty 
of Kainardji on which Eussia had always insisted. The 
Eussian Government refused to accept any modifications. 

From that time all hopes of peace were over. Our troops 
were moving towards Malta ; the streets of London, of Liver- 
pool, of Southampton, and other towns, were ringing with 
the cheers of enthusiastic crowds gathered together to watch 
the marching of troops destined for the East. Turkey had 
actually declared war against Eussia. We had known so 
little of war for nearly forty years, that added to all the other 
emotions which the coming of battle must bring was the 
mere feeling of curiosity as to the sensation produced by 
a state of war. It was an abstraction to the living genera- 
tion — a thing to read of and discuss and make poetry and 
romance out of; but they could not yet realise what itself 
was like. 

Meantime where was Lord Palmerston ? He of all men, 
one would think, must have been pleased with the turn things 
were taking. He was really very busy all this time in his new 
duties. Lord Palmerston was a remarkably efficient and suc- 
cessful Home Secretary. His unceasing activity loved to show 
itself in whatever department he might be called upon to 
occupy. He brought to the somewhat prosaic duties of his 
new office all the energy which he had formerly shown in 
managing revolutions and dictating to foreign courts. The 
ticket-of -leave system dates from the time of his administration. 
The measure to abate the smoke nuisance, by compelling fac- 
tories under penalties to consume their own smoke, is also 
the offspring of Palmerston' s activity in the Home Office. 
The Factory Acts were extended by him. He went energeti- 
cally to work in the shutting up of graveyards in the metro- 
polis. He was acquiring a new and a somewhat odd 
reputation in his way of answering deputations and letters. 
Lord Palmerston was always civil and cordial ; he was full of 
a peculiar kind of fresh common sense, and always ready to 
apply it to any subject whatever. He could at any time say 



I 4 2 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. XI. 

some racy thing which set the public wondering and laughing. 
He had not a poetic or philosophic mind. In clearing his 
intelligence from all that he would have called prejudice or 
superstition, he had cleared out also much of the deeper sym- 
pathetic faculty which enables one man to understand the 
feelings and get at the springs of conduct in the breasts of 
other men. No one can doubt that his jaunty way of treating 
grave and disputed subjects offended many pure and simple 
minds. Yet it was a mistake to suppose that mere levity dic- 
tated his way of dealing with the prejudices of others. He 
had often given the question his deepest attention, and come 
to a conclusion with as much thought as his temperament 
would have allowed to any subject. The difference between 
him and graver men was that when he had come to a con- 
clusion seriously, he loved to express his views humorously. 
But there can be no doubt that Palmerston often made enemies 
by his seeming levity when another man could easily have 
made friends by saying just the same thing in grave words. 
The majority of the House of Commons liked him because he 
amused them and made them laugh ; and they thought no 
more of the matter. 

But the war is now fairly launched ; and Palmerston is to 
all appearance what would be vulgarly called ' out of the 
swim.' Every eye was turned to him. One day it was 
given out that Palmerston had actually resigned. It was 
at once asserted that his resignation was caused by 
difference of opinion between him and his colleagues on the 
Eastern policy of the Government. But on the other hand 
it was as stoutly affirmed that the difference of opinion had 
only to do with the new Reform Bill which Lord John 
Russell was preparing to introduce. Few people in England 
who cared anything about the whole question believed 
that at such a time Lord Palmerston would have gone 
out of office because he did not quite like the details of 
a Eeform Bill, or that the Cabinet would have obstinately 
clung to such a scheme just then in spite of his opposition. 
When Lord Palmerston resumed his place in the Ministry, 
the public at large felt certain that the war spirit was now at 
last to have its way, and that the dallylngs of the peace- 
lovers were over. Nor was England long left to guess at 
the reason why Lord Palmerston had so suddenly resigned 
his office, and so suddenly returned to it. A great disaster had 
fallen upon Turkey. Her fleet had been destroyed by the Bus- 



CH. XI. THE CRIMEAN WAR. 143 

sians at Sinope, a considerable seaport town and naval station 
belonging to Turkey on the southern shore of the Black Sea, 
on November 30, 1853. The attack was not treacherous, but 
openly made ; not sudden, but clearly announced by previous 
acts. Eussia and Turkey were not only formally but actually 
at war. The Turks were the first to begin the actual military 
operations. But at the time, when the true state of affairs 
was little known in England, the account of the ' massacre of 
Sinope ' was received as if it had been the tale of some 
unparalleled act of treachery and savagery ; and the eager- 
ness of the country for war against Bussia became inflamed 
to actual passion. 

It was at that moment that Palmerston resigned his office. 
The Cabinet were still not prepared to go as far as he would 
have gone. Lord Palmerston, supported by the urgent 
pressure of the Emperor of the French, succeeded, however, 
in at last overcoming their determination ; and Lord Palmer- 
ston resumed his place, master of the situation. France and 
England told Bussia that they were resolved to prevent any 
repetition of the Sinope affair ; that their squadrons would 
enter the Black Sea with orders to request, and if necessary 
to constrain, every Bussian ship met in the Euxine to return 
to Sebastopol ; and to repel by force any act of aggression 
afterwards attempted against the Ottoman territory or flag. 
This was, in fact, war. "When the resolution of the Western 
Cabinets was communicated to the Emperor of Bussia he with- 
drew his representatives from London and Paris. On February 
21, 1854, the diplomatic relations between Bussia and the two 
allied powers were brought to a stop. Six weeks before this 
the English and French fleets had entered the Black Sea. A 
few days after a crowd assembled in front of the Boyal Exchange 
to watch the performance of a ceremonial that had been little 
known to the living generation. The Sergeant-at-Arms, 
accompanied by some of the officials of the City, read from 
the steps of the Boyal Exchange her Majesty's declaration of 
war against Bussia. 

The principal reason for the separation of the two Western 
Powers of Europe from the other great States was found in 
the condition of Prussia. The Prussian sovereign was related 
to the Emperor of Bussia, and his kingdom was almost over- 
shadowed by Bussian influence. Prussia had come to occupy 
a lower position in Europe than she had ever before held 
during her existence as a kingdom. The King of Prussia was 



144 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. XI. 

a highly-cultured, amiable, literary man. He loved letters and 
art in a sort of dilettante way ; he had good impulses and a 
weak nature ; he was a dreamer ; a sort of philosopher man- 
que' . He was unable to make up his mind to any momentous 
decision until the time for rendering it effective had gone by. 
A man naturally truthful, he was often led by very weakness 
into acts that seemed irreconcilable with his previous promises 
and engagements. He could say witty and sarcastic things, 
and when political affairs went wrong with him, he could con- 
sole himself with one or two sharp sayings only heard of by 
those immediately around him ; and then the world might go 
its way for him. He went so far with the allies as to lead 
them for a while to believe that he was going all the way ; 
but at the last moment he broke off, declared that the interests 
of Prussia did not require or allow him to engage in a war, 
and left France and England to walk their own road. Austria 
could not venture upon such a war without the co-operation of 
Prussia. Austria and Prussia made an arrangement between 
themselves for mutual defence in case the progress of the war 
should directly imperil the interests of either ; and England 
and France undertook in alliance the task of chastising the 
presumption and restraining the ambitious designs of Eussia. 
It must be remembered that the controversy between Eussia 
and the West really involved several distinct questions, in seme 
of which Prussia had absolutely no direct interest and Austria 
very little. Foremost among these was the question of the 
Straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. 

Eussia and Turkey between them surrounded the whole of 
the Black Sea with their territory. The only outlet of Eussia 
on the southern side is the Black Sea. The Black Sea is, 
save for one little outlet at its south-western extremity, a huge 
land-locked lake. That little outlet is the narrow channel 
called the Bosphorus. The Bosphorus is some seventeen miles 
in length, and in some places it is hardly more than half a 
mile in breadth. But it is very deep all through, so that ships 
of war can float close up to its very shores on either side. It 
passes between the city of Constantinople and its Asiatic 
suburb of Scutari, and then opens into the little Sea of Marmora. 
Out of the Sea of Marmora the way westward is through the 
channel of the Dardanelles, which forms the passage into 
the Archipelago, and thence into the Mediterranean. The 
channel of the Dardanelles is, like the Bosphorus, narrow 
and very deep, but it pursues its course for some forty miles. 



CM. XI. THE CRIMEAN WAR. I4S 

Anyone who holds a map in his hand will see at once how 
Turkey and Eussia alike are affected by the existence of the 
Straits on either extremity of the Sea of Marmora. Close up 
these Straits against vessels of war, and the capital of the 
Sultan is absolutely unassailable from the sea. Close them, 
on the other hand, and the Eussian fleet in the Black Sea is 
absolutely cut off from the Mediterranean and the Western world. 
But then it has to be remembered that the same act of closing 
would secure the Eussian ports and shores on the Black Sea 
from the approach of any of the great navies of the West. The 
Dardanelles and the Bosphorus being alike such narrow 
channels, and being edged alike by Turkish territory, were not 
regarded as high seas. The Sultans always claimed the right 
to exclude foreign ships of war from both the Straits. The 
closing of the Straits had been the subject of a perfect succes- 
sion of treaties. 

As matters stood then, the Sultan was not only permitted 
but was bound to close the Straits in times of peace, and no 
navy might enter them without his consent even in times of 
war. By this treaty the Black Sea fleet of Eussia became 
literally a Black Sea fleet, wholly cut off from the Mediter- 
ranean and Western Europe. Naturally Eussia chafed at this ; 
but at the same time she was not willing to see the restriction 
withdrawn in favour of an arrangement that would leave the 
Straits, and consequently the Black Sea, open to the navies of 
France and England. Therefore it was natural that the 
ambition of Eussia should tend towards the ultimate possession 
of Constantinople and the Straits for herself ; but as this was an 
ambition the fulfilment of which seemed far off and beset with 
vast dangers, her object, meanwhile, was to gain as much influ- 
ence and ascendency as possible over the Ottoman Govern- 
ment ; to make it practically her vassal, and in any case to 
prevent any other great Power from obtaining the influence 
and ascendency which she coveted for herself. Now the 
tendency of this ambition and of all the intermediate claims 
and disputes with regard to the opening or closing of the Straits 
was of importance to Europe generally as a part of Eussian 
aggrandisement; but of the great Powers they concerned 
England most ; France as a Mediterranean and a naval power ; 
Austria only in a third and remoter degree ; and Prussia at 
the time of King Frederick William least of all. 

To the great majority of the English people this war was 
popular, partly because of the natural and inevitable reaction 



H6 a short history of our OWN TIMES. CH. XI. 

against the doctrines of peace and mere trading prosperity, 
partly too because of its novelty. The doctrines of the Peace 
Society had never taken any hold of this country at all. Its 
votaries were in any case not many at the time when the 
Crimean War broke out. They had very little influence on 
the course of the national policy. They were assailed with a 
flippant and a somewhat ignoble ridicule. The worst reproach 
that could be given to men like Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright 
was to accuse them of being members of the Peace Society. 
It does not appear that either man was a member of the actual 
organisation. Mr. Bright's religious creed made him neces- 
sarily a votary of peace ; Mr. Cobden had attended meetings 
called with the futile purpose of establishing peace among 
nations by the operation of good feeling and of common sense. 

In the Cabinet itself there were men who disliked the idea 
of a war quite as much as they did. Lord Aberdeen detested 
war, and thought it so absurd a way of settling national dis- 
putes, that almost until the first cannon-shot had been fired 
he could not bring himself to believe in the possibility of the 
intelligent English people being drawn into it. Mr. Gladstone 
had a conscientious and a sensitive objection to war in general 
as a brutal and an unchristian occupation, although his feel- 
ings would not have carried him so far away as to prevent his 
recognition of the fact that war might often be a just, a neces- 
sary, and a glorious undertaking on the part of a civilised nation. 
The difficulties of the hour were considerably enhanced by the 
differences of opinion that prevailed in the Cabinet. 

There were other differences there as well as those that 
belonged to the mere abstract question of the glory or the 
guilt of war. It soon became clear that two parties of the 
Cabinet looked on the war and its objects with different eyes 
and interests. On one side there were Lord Aberdeen and 
Mr. Gladstone, who were concerned far more for the welfare 
of Turkey's Christian subjects than for the stability of Turkey 
or the humiliation of Eussia. On the other side was Lord 
Palmerston, gay, resolute, clear as to his own purpose, con- 
vinced to the heart's core of everything which just then it 
was for the advantage of his cause to believe. The brave 
Turk had to be supported ; the wicked Eussian had to be put 
down. It was impossible to doubt on which side were to be 
found the materials for the successful conduct of the enter- 
prise which was now so popular with the country. The most 
conscientious men might differ about the prudence or the 



CH. xi. THE CRIMEAN WAR. 147 

moral propriety of the war ; but to those who once accepted 
its necessity and wished our side to win, there could be no 
possible doubt, even for members of the Peace Society, as to 
the importance of having Lord Palmerston either at the head 
ot affairs or in charge of the war itself. The moment the war 
actually broke out it became evident to everyone that Palmer- 
ston' s interval of comparative inaction and obscurity was well- 
nigh over. 

England then and France entered the war as allies. Lord 
Eaglan, formerly Lord Fitzroy Somerset, an old pupil of the 
Great Duke in the Peninsular War, and who had lost his 
right arm serving under Wellington at Waterloo, was appointed 
to command the English forces. Marshal St. Arnaud, a bold, 
brilliant soldier of fortune, was entrusted by the Emperor of 
the French with the leadership of the soldiers 01 France. 
The allied forces went out to the East and assembled at 
Varna, on the Black Sea shore, from which they were to 
make their descent on the Crimea. The invasion of the 
Crimea, however, was not welcomed by the English or the 
French commander. It was undertaken by Lord Eaglan 
out of deference to the recommendations of the Government ; 
and by Marshal St. Arnaud out of deference to the Em- 
peror of the French. The allied forces were therefore con- 
veyed to the south-western shore of the Crimea, and effected 
a landing in Kalamita Bay, a short distance north 01 the point 
at which the river Alma runs into the sea. Sebastopol itself 
lies about thirty miles to the south ; and then more southward 
still, divided by the bulk of a jutting promontory from Sebas- 
topol, is the harbour of Balaklava. The disembarkation began 
on the morning of September 14, 1854, and was effected with- 
out any opposition from the Eussians. On September 19 the 
allies marched out of their encampments and reached the 
Alma about noon on September 20. They found that they 
had to cross the river in the face of the Eussian batteries 
armed with heavy guns on the highest points of the hills or 
bluffs, of scattered artillery, and of dense masses of infantry 
which covered the hills. The Eussians were under the com- 
mand of Prince Mentschikoff. The soldiers of the Czar fought 
stoutly and stubbornly as they have always done ; but they 
could not stand up against the blended vehemence and obsti- 
nacy of the English and French. The river was crossed, the 
opposite heights were mounted, Prince Mentschikoff' s great 
redoubt was carried, the Eussians were driven from the field, 



148 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. en. xi. 

the allies occupied their ground; the victory was to the 
Western Powers. The first field was fought, and we had 
won. 

The Russians ought to have been pursued. But there 
was no pursuit. Lord Eaglan was eager to follow up the 
victory ; but the French had as yet hardly any cavalry, and 
Marshal St. Arnaud would not agree to any further enterprise 
that day. Lord Baglan believed that he ought not to persist ; 
and nothing was done. Except for the bravery of those 
who fought, the battle was not much to boast of. But it 
was the first great battle which for nearly forty years our 
soldiers had fought with a civilised enemy. The military 
authorities and the country were well disposed to make the 
most of it. The gallant medley on the banks of the Alma 
and the fruitless interval of inaction that followed it were told 
of as if men were speaking of some battle of the gods. Very 
soon, however, a different note came to be sounded. The 
campaign had been opened under conditions differing from 
those of most campaigns that went before it. Science 
had added many new discoveries to the art of war. Literature 
had added one remarkable contribution of her own to the con- 
ditions amid which campaigns were to be carried on. She 
had added the ' special correspondent.' The war correspondent 
now scrawls his despatches as he sits in his saddle under the 
fire of the enemy ; he scrawls them with a pencil, noting and 
describing each incident of the fight, so far as he can see it, 
as coolly as if he were describing a review of volunteers in 
Hyde Park ; and he contrives to send off his narrative by 
telegraph before the victor in the fight has begun to pursue, 
or has settled down to hold the ground he won ; and the war 
correspondent's story is expected to be as brilliant and pic- 
turesque in style as it ought to be exact and faithful in its 
statements. In the days of the Crimea things had not advanced 
quite so far as that ; the war was well on before the submarine 
telegraph between Varna and the Crimea allowed of daily re- 
ports ; but the feats of the war correspondent then filled men's 
minds with wonder. When the expedition was leaving England 
it was accompanied by a special correspondent from each of 
the great daily papers of London. The Times sent out a re- 
presentative whose name almost immediately became celebrated 
— Mr. William Howard Eussell, the first of war correspondents 
in that day as Mr. Archibald Forbes of the Daily News was 
at a later period. Mr. Eussell rendered some service to the 



CH.XI. THE CRIMEAN WAR, 149 

English army and to his country, however, which no brilliancy 
of literary style would alone have enabled him to do. It was 
to his great credit as a man of judgment and observation that, 
being a civilian who had never before seen one puff of war-smoke, 
he was able to distinguish between the confusion inseparable 
from all actual levying of war and the coniusion that comes 
of distinctly bad administration. Mr. Eussell soon saw that 
there was confusion ; and he had the soundness of judgment 
to know that the confusion was that of a breaking- down 
system. Therefore, while the fervour of delight in the 
courage and success of our army was still fresh in the minds 
of the public at home, while every music-hall was ringing 
with the cheap rewards of valour in the shape of popular 
glorifications of our commanders and our soldiers, the readers 
of the Times began to learn that things were faring badly 
indeed with the conquering army of the Alma. The ranks 
were thinned by the ravages of cholera. The hospitals were 
in a wretchedly disorganised condition. Stores of medicines 
and strengthening food were decaying in places where no one 
wanted them or could well get at them, while men were dying 
in hundreds among our tents in the Crimea for lack of them. 
The system of clothing, of transport, of feeding, of nursing — 
everything had broken down. The special correspondent of 
the Times and other correspondents continued to din these 
things into the ears of the public at home. Exultation began 
to give way to a feeling of dismay. The patriotic anger against 
the Eussians was changed for a mood of deep indignation 
against our own authorities and our own war administration. 
It soon became apparent to everyone that the whole campaign 
had been planned on the assumption of our military authorities 
here at home — we do not speak of the commanders in the 
field — that Sebastopol was to fall like another Jericho, at the 
sound of the war-trumpets' blast. 

Our commanders in the field were, on the contrary, rather 
disposed to overrate than to underrate the strength of the 
Eussians. It is very likely that if a sudden dash had been 
made at Sebastopol by land and sea, it might have been taken 
almost at the very opening of the war. But the delay gave 
the Eussians full warning ; and they did not neglect it. On 
the third day after the battle of the Alma the Eussians sank 
seven vessels of their Black Sea fleet at the entrance of the 
harbour of Sebastopol, and the entrance of the harbour was 
barred as by sunken rocks against any approach of an 



150 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH.XL 

enemy's ship. There was an end to every dream of a sudden 
capture of Sebastopol. The allied armies moved again 
from their positions on the Alma to Balaklava, which lies 
south of the city, on the other side of a promontory, and 
which has a port that might enable them to secure a con- 
stant means of communication between the armies and 
the fleets. Sebastopol was but a few miles off, and pre- 
parations were at once made for an attack on it by land 
and sea. On October 17 the attack began. It was prac- 
tically a failure. The fleet could not get near enough to 
the sea-forts of Sebastopol to make their broadsides of any 
real effect, because of the shallow water and the sunken ships ; 
and although the attack from the land was vigorous and was 
fiercely kept up, yet it could not carry its object. 

The Eussians attacked the allies fiercely on October 25, in 
the hope of obtaining possession of Balaklava. The attempt 
was bold and brilliant ; but it was splendidly repulsed. Never 
did a day of battle do more credit to English courage, or less 
perhaps to English generalship. The cavalry particularly 
distinguished themselves. It was in great measure on our side 
a cavalry action. It will be memorable in all English history 
as the battle in which occurred the famous charge of the 
Light Brigade. Owing to some fatal misconception of the 
meaning of an order from the Commander-in-Chief, the Light 
Brigade, 607 men in all, charged what has been rightly 
described as * the Eussian army in position.' Of the 607 men 
198 came back. Long, painful, and hopeless were the dis- 
putes about this fatal order. The controversy can never be 
wholly settled. The officer who bore the order was one of the 
first who fell in the outset. All Europe, all the world, rang 
with wonder and admiration of the futile and splendid charge. 
The Poet Laureate sang of it in spirited verses. Perhaps its 
best epitaph was contained in the celebrated comment ascribed 
to the French General Bosquet, and which has since become 
proverbial, and been quoted until men are well-nigh tired of 
it — ' It was magnificent, but it was not war.' 

Next day, the enemy made another vigorous attack on 
a much larger scale, moving out of Sebastopol itself, and 
were again repulsed. On November 5 the Eussians made 
another grand attack on the allies, chiefly on the British, and 
were once more splendidly repulsed. . The plateau of Inker- 
man was the principal scene of the struggle. It was occupied 
by the Guards and a few British regiments, on whom fell, 



en. XI. THE CRIMEAN WAR, 151 

until General Bosquet with his French was able to come to 
their assistance, the task of resisting a Kussian army. This 
was the severest and the fiercest engagement of the campaign. 
Inkerman was described at the time as the soldiers' battle. 
Strategy, it was said everywhere, there was none. The attack 
was made under cover of a dark and drizzling mist. The 
battle was fought for a while almost absolutely in the dark. 
There was hardly any attempt to direct the allies by any 
principles of scientific warfare. The soldiers fought stub- 
bornly a series of hand-to-hand fights, and we are entitled to 
say that the better men won in the end. 

Meanwhile what were people saying in England ? They were 
indignantly declaring that the whole campaign was a muddle. 
The temper of a people thus stimulated and thus disappointed 
is almost always indiscriminating and unreasonable in its 
censure. The first idea is to find a victim. The victim on 
whom the anger of a large portion of the public turned in this 
instance was the Prince Consort. The most absurd ideas, the 
most cruel and baseless calumnies, were in circulation about 
him. He was accused of having out of some inscrutable motive 
made use of all his secret influence to prevent the success of the 
campaign. He was charged with being in a conspiracy with 
Prussia, with Eussia, with no one knew exactly whom, to weaken 
the strength of England, and secure a triumph for her enemies. 
Stories were actually told at one time of his having been arrested 
for high treason. The charges which sprang of this heated and. 
unjust temper on the part of the public did not indeed long pre- 
vail against the Prince Consort. When once the subject came 
to be taken up in Parliament it was shown almost in a moment 
that there was not the slightest ground or excuse for any of the 
absurd surmises and cruel suspicions which had been creating so 
much agitation. The agitation collapsed in a moment. But 
while it lasted it was both vehement and intense, and gave much 
pain to the Prince, and far more pain still to the Queen his wife. 

The winter was gloomy at home as well as abroad. The 
news constantly arriving from the Crimea told only of devasta- 
tion caused by foes far more formidable than the Eussians — sick- 
ness, bad weather, bad management. The Black Sea was swept 
and scourged by terrible storms. The destruction ol transport- 
ships laden with winter stores for our men was oi incalculable 
injury to the army. Clothing, blanketing, provisions, hospital 
necessaries of all kinds, were destroyed in vast quantities. 
The loss of life among the crews of the vessels was immense. 



152 A SHORT HISTORY OP OUR OWN TIMES. ch. xi. 

A storm was nearly as disastrous in this way as a battle. On 
shore the sufferings of the army were unspeakable. The tents 
were torn from their pegs and blown away. The officers and 
men were exposed to the bitter cold and the fierce stormy blasts. 
Our soldiers had for the most part little experience or even idea 
of such cold as they had to encounter this gloomy winter. The 
intensity of the cold was so great that no one might dare to 
touch any metal substance in the open air with his bare hand 
under the penalty of leaving the skin behind him. The hos- 
pitals for the sick and wounded at Scutari were in a wretchedly 
disorganised condition. They were for the most part in an 
absolutely chaotic condition as regards arrangement and supply. 
In some instances medical stores were left to decay at Varna, 
or were found lying useless in the holds of vessels in Balaklava 
bay, which were needed for the wounded at Scutari. The 
medical officers were able and zealous men ; the stores were 
provided and paid for so far as our Government was concerned ; 
but the stores were not brought to the medical men. These 
had their hands all but idle, their eyes and souls tortured by 
the sight of sufferings which they were unable to relieve for 
want of the commonest appliances of the hospital. The most 
extraordinary instances of blunder and confusion were con- 
stantly coming to light. Great consignments of boots arrived, 
and were found to be all for the left foot. Mules for the 
conveyance of stores were contracted for and delivered, but 
delivered so that they came into the hands of the Eussians 
and not of us. Shameful frauds were perpetrated in the 
instance of some of the contracts for preserved meat. The 
evils of the hospital disorganisation were happily made a 
means of bringing about a new system of attending to the 
sick and wounded in war which has already created some- 
thing like a revolution in the manner of treating the victims 
of battle. Mr. Sidney Herbert, horrified at the way in which 
things were managed in Scutari and the Crimea, applied to 
a distinguished woman who had long taken a deep interest in 
hospital reform to superintend personally the nursing of the 
soldiers. Miss Florence Nightingale was the daughter of a 
wealthy English country gentleman. She had chosen not 
to pass her life in fashionable or aesthetic inactivity ; and had 
from a very early period turned her attention to sanitary 
questions. She had studied nursing as a science and a system ; 
had made herself acquainted with the working of various con- 
tinental institutions ; and about the time when the war broke 



ch. xi. THE CRIMEAN WAR. 153 

out she was actually engaged in reorganising the Sick Gover- 
nesses' Institution in Harley Street, London. To her Mr. 
Sidney Herbert turned. He offered her, if she would accept 
the task he proposed, plenary authority over all the nurses, and 
an unlimited power of drawing on the Government for what- 
ever she might think necessary to the success of her under- 
taking. Miss Nightingale accepted the task, and went out to 
Scutari accompanied by some women of rank like her own, and 
a trained staff of nurses. They speedily reduced chaos into 
order ; and from the time of their landing in Scutari there was 
at least one department of the business of war which was never 
again a subject of complaint. The spirit of the chivalric days 
had been restored under better auspices for its abiding in- 
fluence. Sidney Herbert, in his letter to Miss Nightingale, 
had said that her example, if she accepted the task he proposed, 
would ' multiply the good to all time.' These words proved 
to have no exaggeration in them. We have never seen a war 
since in which women of education and of genuine devotion 
have not given themselves up to the task of caring for the 
wounded. The Geneva Convention and the bearing of the Eed 
Cross are among the results of Florence Nightingale's work in 
the Crimea. 

But the siege of Sebastopol was meanwhile dragging 
heavily along ; and sometimes it was not quite certain which 
ought to be called the besieged, the Eussians in the city or 
the allies encamped in sight of it. During some months the 
armies did little or nothing. The commissariat system and 
the land transport system had broken down. The armies 
were miserably weakened by sickness. Cholera was ever and 
anon raging anew among our men. Horses and mules were 
dying of cold and starvation. The roads were only deep 
irregular ruts filled with mud ; the camp was a marsh ; the 
tents stood often in pools of water ; the men had sometimes 
no beds but straw dripping with wet ; and hardly any bed 
coverings. Our unfortunate Turkish allies were in a far more 
wretched plight than even we ourselves. The authorities who 
ought to have looked after them were impervious to the 
criticisms of special correspondents and unassailable by 
Parliamentary votes of censure. A condemnation of the 
latter kind was hanging over our Government. Parliament 
was called together before Christmas ; and after the Christmas 
recess Mr. Eoebuck gave notice that he would move for a 
select committee to inquire into the condition of the army 
7* 



154 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. xi. 

before Sebastopol, and into the conduct of those departments 
of the Government whose duty it had been to minister to the 
wants of the army. Lord John Eussell did not believe for 
himself that the motion could be conscientiously resisted ; but 
as it necessarily involved a censure upon some of his colleagues, 
he did not think he ought to remain longer in the Ministry, 
and he therefore resigned his office. The sudden resignation 
of the leader of the House of Commons was a death-blow to 
any plans of resistance by which the Government might other- 
wise have thought of encountering Mr. Eoebuck's motion. 
Mr. Eoebuck's motion came on, and was resisted with vigour 
by Lord Palmerston and Mr. Gladstone. The House of 
Commons was not to be moved by any such argument or 
appeal. The one pervading idea was that England had been 
endangered and shamed by the break- down of her army 
organisation. When the division took place 305 members 
voted for Mr. Eoebuck's motion and only 148 against. The 
majority against Ministers was therefore 157. Everyone 
knows what a scene usually takes place when a Ministry is 
defeated in the House of Commons. Cheering again and 
again renewed, counter-cheers of defiance, wild exultation, 
vehement indignation, a whole whirlpool of various emotions, 
seething in that little hall in St. Stephen's. But this time 
there was no such outburst. The House could hardly realise 
the fact that the Ministry of all the talents had been thus 
completely and ignominiously defeated. A dead silence 
followed the announcement of the numbers. Then there was 
a half-breathless murmur of amazement and incredulity. 
The Speaker repeated the numbers, and doubt was over. It 
was still uncertain how the House would express its feelings. 
Suddenly someone laughed. The sound gave a direction and 
a relief to perplexed, pent-up emotion. Shouts of laughter 
followed. Not merely the pledged opponents of the Govern- 
ment laughed. Many of those who had voted with Ministers 
found themselves laughing too. It seemed so absurd, so in- 
congruous, this way of disposing of the great Coalition 
Government. Many must have thought of the night of fierce 
debate, little more than two years before, when Mr. Disraeli, 
then on the verge of his fall from power and realising fully 
the strength of the combination against him, consoled his 
party and himself for the imminent fatality awaiting them by 
the defiant words, ' I know that I have to face a Coalition ; 
the combination may be successful. A combination has before 



ch. xi. THE CRIMEAN WAR. 155 

this been successful ; but coalitions, though they may be 
successful, have always found that their triumphs have been 
brief. This I know, that England does not love coalitions.' 
Only two years had passed and the great Coalition had fallen, 
overwhelmed with reproach and popular indignation, and amid 
sudden shouts of laughter. 

Lord Derby was invited by the Queen to form a Government. 
He tried and failed. Palmerston did not see his way to join 
a Derby Administration, and without him Lord Derby could 
not go on. The Queen then sent for Lord John Eussell ; but 
Eussell found that he could not get a Government together. 
Lord Palmerston was then, to use his own phrase, the in- 
evitable. There was not much change in the Ministry. Lord 
Aberdeen was gone, and Lord Palmerston took his place ; and 
Lord Panmure, who had formerly as Fox Maule administered 
the affairs of the army, succeeded the Duke of Newcastle. 
Lord Panmure, however, combined in his own person the 
functions, up to that time absurdly separated, of Secretary- 
at-War and Secretary-for-War. It was hoped that by this 
change great benefit would come to our whole army system. 
Lord Palmerston acted energetically too in sending out a 
sanitary commission to the Crimea, and a commission to 
superintend the commissariat, a department that, almost 
more than any other, had broken down. Lord Palmerston 
was strongly pressed by some of the more strenuous Eeformers 
of the House. Mr. Layard, who had acquired some celebrity 
before in a very different field, as a discoverer, that is to say, 
in the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, was energetic and in* 
cessant in his attacks on the administration of the war, and 
was not disposed even now to give the new Government a 
moment's rest. Mr. Layard was a man of a certain rough 
ability, immense self-sufficiency, and indomitable egotism. 
He was not in any sense an eloquent speaker; he was 
singularly wanting in all the graces of style and manner. 
But he was fluent, he was vociferous, he never seemed to have 
a moment's doubt on any conceivable question, he never 
admitted that there could by any possibility be two sides to 
any matter of discussion. He did really know a great deal 
about the East at a time when the habit of travelling in the 
East was comparatively rare. He stamped down all doubt 
or difference of view with the overbearing dogmatism of the 
proverbial man who has been there and oughc to know ; and 
be was in many respects admirably fitted to be the spokesman 



156 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. xi. 

of all those, and they were not a few, who saw that things 
had heen going wrong without exactly seeing why, and were 
eager that something should be done, although they did not 
clearly know what. Lord Palmerston strove to induce the 
House not to press for the appointment of the committee 
recommended in Mr. Roebuck's motion. The Government, he 
said, would make the needful inquiries themselves. Mr. 
Roebuck, however, would not give way, and Lord Palmerston 
yielded to a demand which had undoubtedly the support of a 
vast force of public opinion, but his unavoidable concession 
brought on a new ministerial crisis. Sir James Graham, 
Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Sidney Herbert declined to hold office 
any longer. They had opposed the motion for an inquiry 
most gravely and strenuously, and they would not lend any 
countenance to it by remaining in office. Sir Charles Wood 
succeeded Sir James Graham as First Lord of the Admiralty ; 
Lord John Russell took the place of Secretary of the Colonies, 
vacated by Sidney Herbert ; and Sir George Cornewall Lewis 
followed Mr. Gladstone as Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

Meanwhile new negotiations for peace, set on foot under 
the influence of Austria, had been begun at Vienna, and 
Lord John Russell had been sent there to represent the 
interests of England. We had got a new ally in the little 
kingdom of Sardinia, whose government was then under the 
control of one of the master-spirits of modern politics, 
Count Cavour. Sardinia went into war in order that she 
might have a locus standi in the councils of Europe from which 
to set forth her grievances against Austria. The policy was 
singularly successful, and entirely justified the expectations of 
Cavour. The Crimean War laid the foundations of the king- 
dom of Italy. But there was another event of a very different 
nature, the effect of which seemed at first likely to be all in 
favour of peace. On March 2, 1855, the Emperor Nicholas 
of Russia died of pulmonary apoplexy, after an attack of 
influenza. A cartoon appeared in Punch, which was called 
* General Fevrier turned Traitor.' The Emperor Nicholas had 
boasted that Russia had two generals on whom she could 
always rely, General Janvier and General Fevrier; and 
now the English artist represented General February, a 
skeleton in Russian uniform, turning traitor and laying 
his bony ice-cold hand on the heart of the Sovereign and 
betraying him to the tomb. But indeed it was not General 
February alone who doomed Nicholas to death. The Czar 



CH. xi. THE CRIMEAN WAR. 157 

died of broken hopes; of the recklessness that comes 
from defeat and despair. He took no precautions against 
cold and exposure ; he treated with a magnanimous dis- 
dain the remonstrances of his physicians and his friends. 
The news of the sudden death of the Emperor created a 
profound sensation in England. At first there was, as we 
have said, a common impression that Nicholas's son and 
successor, Alexander II., would be more anxious to make 
peace than his father had been. But this hope was soon 
gone. The new Czar could not venture to show himself to 
his people in a less patriotic light than his predecessor. The 
prospects of the allies were at the time remarkably gloomy. 
There must, have seemed to the new Kussian Emperor con- 
siderable ground for the hope that disease, and cold, and bad 
management would do more harm to the army of England 
at least than any Eussian general could do. The Conference 
at Vienna proved a failure. Lord John Eussell, sent to 
Vienna as our representative, was charged by Mr. Disraeli 
with having encouraged the Eussian pretensions. Sir E. B. 
Lytton gave notice of a direct vote of censure on ' the 
Minister charged with the negotiations at Vienna.' But 
Eussell anticipated the certain effect of a vote in the 
House of Commons by resigning his office. The vote of 
censure was withdrawn. Sir William Molesworth, one of the 
most distinguished of the school who were since called 
Philosophical Eadicals, succeeded him as Colonial Secretary ; 
and the Ministry carried one or two triumphant votes against 
Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Eoebuck, and other opponents, or at least 
unfriendly critics. Meanwhile the Emperor of the French 
and his wife had paid a visit to London, and had been 
received with considerable enthusiasm. The Queen seems to 
have been very favourably impressed by the Emperor. The 
Prince Consort seems to have been less impressed. The 
Prince Consort appears to have judged the Emperor almost 
exactly as impartial opinion has judged him everywhere in 
Europe since that time. 

The operations in the Crimea were renewed with some 
vigour. The English army lost much by the death of its 
brave and manly Commander-in-Chief, Lord Eaglan. He 
was succeeded by General Simpson, whose administration 
during the short time that he held the command was at least 
well qualified to keep Lord Eaglan' s memory green and to 
prevent the regret for his death from losing any of its keen- 



158 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. XI. 

ness. The French army had lost its first commander long 
before — the versatile, reckless, brilliant soldier of fortune, St. 
Arnaud. After St. Arnaud's death the command was trans- 
ferred for a while to General Canrobert, who resigned it in 
favour of General Pelissier. The Sardinian contingent had 
arrived, and had given admirable proof of its courage and 
discipline. On August 16, 1855, the Eussians, under General 
Liprandi, made an unsuccessful effort to raise the siege of 
Sebastopol by an attack on the allied forces. The Sardinian 
contingent bore themselves with stubborn bravery in the resist- 
ance, and all Northern Italy was thrown into wild delight by 
the news that the flag of Piedmont had been carried to 
victory over the troops of one great European Power, and 
side by side with those of two others. It was the first great 
illustration of Cavour's habitual policy of blended audacity 
and cool, far-seeing judgment. The siege had been pro- 
gressing for some time with considerable activity. The 
Malakoff tower and the Mamelon battery in front of it 
became the scenes and the objects of constant struggle. 
The Eussians made desperate night sorties again and again, 
and were always repulsed. On June 7 the English assaulted 
the quarries in front of the Eedan, and the French attacked 
the Mamelon. The attack on both sides was successful ; but 
it was followed on the 18th of the same month by a desperate 
and wholly unsuccessful attack on the Eedan and Malakoff 
batteries. On September 5 the allies made an attack almost 
simultaneously upon the Malakoff and the Eedan. The French 
soon got possession of the Malakoff, and the English then at 
once advanced upon the Eedan ; but the French were near the 
Malakoff ; the English were very far away from the Eedan. The 
distance our soldiers had to traverse left them almost help- 
lessly exposed to the Eussianfire. They stormed the parapets 
of the Eedan despite all the difficulties of their attack ; but 
they were not able to hold the place. The attacking party 
were far too small in numbers ; reinforcements did not come in 
time ; the English held their own for an hour against odds 
that might have seemed overwhelming ; but it was simply im- 
possible for them to establish themselves in the Eedan, and 
the remnant of them that could withdraw had to retreat to the 
trenches. It was only the old story of the war. Superb 
courage and skill of the officers and men ; outrageously bad 
generalship. The attack might have been renewed that 
day, but the English Commander-in-Chief, General Simpson, 



ch. xi. THE CRIMEAN WAR, 159 

resolved not to make another attempt till the next morning. 
Before the morrow came there was nothing to attack. The 
Eussians withdrew during the night fron the south side of 
Sebastopol. A bridge of boats had been constructed across 
the bay to connect the north and the south sides of the city, 
and across this bridge Prince Gortschakoff quietly withdrew his 
troops. The Eussian general felt that it would be impossible 
for him to hold the city much longer, and that to remain there 
was only useless waste of life. But, as he said in his own de- 
spatch, ' It is not Sebastopol which we have left to them, but 
the burning ruins of the town, which we ourselves set fire to, 
having maintained the honour of the defence in such a 
manner that our great-grandchildren may recall with pride 
the remembrance of it and send it on to all posterity.' It 
was some time before the allies could venture to enter the 
abandoned city. The arsenals and powder-magazines were 
exploding, the flames were bursting out of every public build- 
ing and every private house. The Eussians had made of 
Sebastopol another Moscow. 

With the close of that long siege, which had lasted nearly 
a year, the war may be said to have ended. The brilliant 
episode of Ears, its splendid defence and its final surrender, 
was brought to its conclusion, indeed, after the fall of Sebas- 
topol ; but, although it naturally attracted peculiar attention 
in this country, it could have no effect on the actual fortunes 
of such a war. Ears was defended by Colonel Fenwick 
Williams, an English officer, who held the place against 
overwhelming Eussian forces, and against an enemy far more 
appalling — starvation itself. He had to surrender at last to 
famine ; but the very articles of surrender to which the con- 
queror consented became the trophy of Williams and his men. 
The garrison were allowed to leave the place with all the 
honours of war ; and, ' as a testimony to the valorous resistance 
made by the garrison of Ears, the officers of all ranks are to 
keep their swords.' The war was virtually over. Austria 
had been exerting herself throughout its progress in the 
interests of peace, and after the fall of Sebastopol she 
made a new effort with greater success. France and Eussia 
were indeed now anxious to be out of the struggle 
almost on any terms. If England had held out, it is 
highly probable that she would have had to do so alone. 
For this indeed Lord Palmerston was fully prepared as 
a last resource, sooner than submit to terms which he 



160 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. xh 

considered unsatisfactory. The Congress of Paris opened 
on February 26, 1856, and on March 30 the treaty of peace 
was signed by the plenipotentiaries of the Great Powers. 
Prussia had been admitted to the Congress, which therefore 
represented England, France, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Turkey 
and Sardinia. 

By the treaty Ears was restored to the Sultan, and Sebas- 
topol and all other places taken by the allies were given back 
to Eussia. The Great Powers engaged to respect the inde- 
pendence and territorial integrity of Turkey. The Sultan 
issued a firman for ameliorating the condition of his Christian 
subjects, and no right of interference, it was distinctly specified, 
was given to the other Powers by this concession on the 
Sultan's part. The Black Sea was neutralised ; its waters 
and its ports were thrown open to the mercantile marine 
of every nation, and formally and in perpetuity interdicted to 
the flag of war either of the Powers possessing its coasts or of 
any other Power, with the exception of the right of each of 
the Powers to have the same number of small armed vessels in 
the Black Sea to act as a sort of maritime police and to 
protect the coasts. The Sultan and the Emperor engaged to 
establish and maintain no military or maritime arsenals in 
that sea. The navigation of the Danube was thrown open. 
Moldavia and Wallachia, continuing under the suzerainty of 
the Sultan, were to enjoy all the privileges and immunities 
they already possessed under the guarantee of the contracting 
Powers, but with no separate right of intervention in their 
affairs. Out of Moldavia and Wallachia united, after various 
internal changes, there subsequently grew the kingdom of 
Roumania. The existing position of Servia was secured by 
the treaty. During time of peace the Sultan engaged to admit 
no foreign ships of war into the Bosphorus or the Dardanelles. 

To guarantee Turkey from the enemy they most feared 
a tripartite treaty was afterwards agreed to between England, 
France and Austria. This document bears date in Paris 
April 15, 1856; by it the contracting parties guaranteed 
jointly and severally the independence and integrity of the 
Ottoman empire, and declared that any infraction of the 
general treaty of March- 30 would be considered by them 
as casus belli. The Congress of Paris was remarkable 
for the fact that the plenipotentiaries before separating 
came to an agreement on the rules generally of maritime 
war by which privateering was abolished. It was agreed, 
however, that the rules adopted at the Congress of Paris 



ch. xi. THE CRIMEAN WAR. 161 

should only be binding on those States that had acceded or 
should accede to them. The United States raised some 
difficulty about renouncing the right of privateering, and the 
declarations of the Congress were therefore made without 
America's assenting to them. At the instigation of Count 
Cavour the condition of Italy was brought before the Con- 
gress ; and there can be no doubt that out of the Congress and 
the part that Sardinia assumed as representative of Italian 
nationality came the succession of events which ended in the 
establishment of a King of Italy in the palace of the Quirinal. 
The adjustment of the condition of the Danubian principalities 
too engaged much attention and discussion, and a highly 
ingenious arrangement was devised for the purpose of keeping 
those provinces from actual union, so that they might be cohe- 
rent enough to act as a rampart against Eussia, without being 
so coherent as to cause Austria any alarm for her own somewhat 
disjointed, not to say distracted, political system. All these 
artificial and complex arrangements presently fell to pieces, 
and the principalities became in course of no very long time an 
united independent State under a hereditary Prince. But for 
the hour it was hoped that the independence of Turkey and the 
restriction of Eussia, the security of the Christian provinces, 
the neutrality of the Black Sea, and the closing of the Straits 
against war vessels, had been bought by the war. 

England lost some twenty-four thousand men in the war, 
of whom hardly a sixth fell in battle or died of wounds. 
Cholera and other diseases gave grim account of the rest. 
Forty- one millions of money were added by the campaign to 
the National Debt. England became involved in a quarrel 
with the United States because of our Foreign Enlistment 
Act. At the close of December 1854 Parliament hurriedly 
passed an Act authorising the formation of a Foreign Legion 
for service in the war, and some Swiss and Germans were 
recruited who never proved of the slightest service. Prussia 
and America both complained that the zeal of ou/ recruit- 
ing functionaries outran the limits of discretion and of law. 
One of our consuls was actually put on trial at Cologne ; 
and America made a serious complaint of the enlistment of 
her citizens. England apologised; but the United States 
were out of temper, and insisted on sending our minister, 
Mr. Crampton, away from Washington, and some little time 
passed before the friendly relations of the two States were 
completely restored. 



162 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xi. 

There was a feeling of disappointment in this country at 
the close of the war. Our soldiers had done splendidly ; but 
our generals and our system had done poorly indeed. Only 
one first-class reputation of a military order had come out of 
the war, and that was by the common consent of the world 
awarded to a Eussian — to General Todleben, the defender of 
Sebastopol. No new name was made on our side or on that 
of the French ; and some promising or traditional reputations 
were shattered. The political results of the war were to 
many minds equally unsatisfying. Lord Aberdeen estimated 
that it might perhaps secure peace in the East of Europe for 
some twenty-five years. His modest expectation was pro- 
phetic. Indeed it a little overshot the mark. Twenty-two 
years after the close of the Crimean campaign Russia and 
Turkey were at war again. 



CHAPTEE Xn. 

THE LOECHA ' AEEOW.' — TEANSPOETATION. 

Aftee the supposed settlement of the Eastern Question at 
the Congress of Paris, a sort of languor seems to have come 
over Parliament and the public mind in England. Lord 
John Eussell proposed a series of resolutions to establish 
in England a genuine system of national education, which 
were of course rejected by the House of Commons. Public 
opinion, both in and out of Parliament, was not nearly 
ripe for such a principle then. One of the regular attempts 
to admit the Jews to Parliament was made, and succeeded 
in the House of Commons, to fail, as usual, in the House 
of Lords. The House of Lords itself was thrown into 
great perturbation for a time by the proposal of the Govern- 
ment to confer a peerage for life on one of the judges, 
Sir James Parke. Lord Lyndhurst strongly opposed the 
proposal, on the ground that it was the beginning of an 
attempt to introduce a system of life-peerages, which would 
destroy the ancient and hereditary character of the House of 
Lords. The Government, who had really no reactionary or 
revolutionary designs in their mind, settled the matter for the 
time by creating Sir James Parke Baron Wensleydale in the 
usual way, and the object they had in view was quietly 



CH. XII. THE LORCHA « ARROW? 163 

accomplished many years later, when the appellate jurisdiction 
of the Lords was remodelled. 

Sir George Lewis was Chancellor of the Exchequer. He 
was as yet not credited with anything like the political ability 
which he afterwards proved that he possessed. It was the 
fashion to regard him as a mere bookman, who had drifted 
somehow into Parliament, and who, in the temporary absence 
of available talent, had been thrust into the office lately held 
by Mr. Gladstone. The contrast indeed between the style of 
his speaking and that of Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Disraeli was 
enough to dishearten any political assembly. Sir George 
Lewis began by being nearly inaudible, and continued to the 
last to be oppressed by the most ineffective and unattractive 
manner and delivery. But it began to be gradually found out 
that the monotonous, halting, feeble manner covered a very 
remarkable power of expression ; that the speaker had great 
resources of argument, humour, and illustration;"' that every 
sentence contained some fresh idea or some happy expression. 
After a while the capacity of Lewis ran the risk of being 
overrated quite as much as it had been undervalued before. 

For the present, however, Sir George Lewis was regarded 
only as the sort of statesman whom it was fitting to have in 
office just then ; the statesman of an interval, in whom no one 
was expected to take any particular interest. The attention 
of the public was a good deal distracted from political affairs 
by the failure and frauds of the Eoyal British Bank and other 
frauds, which gave for the time a sort of idea that the financial 
principles of the country were crumbling to pieces. The 
culmination of the extraordinary career of John Sadleir was 
fresh in public memory. This man was the organiser and 
guiding spirit of the Irish Brigade, a gang of adventurers who 
got into Parliament and traded on the genuine grievances of 
their country to get power and money for themselves. John 
Sadleir embezzled, swindled, forged, and finally escaped 
justice by committing suicide on Hampstead Heath. The 
brother of Sadleir was expelled from the House of Commons ; 
one of his accomplices, who had obtained a Government 
appointment and had embezzled money, contrived to make 
his escape to the United States ; and the Irish Brigade was 
broken up. It is only just to say that the best representatives 
of the Irish Catholics and the Irish national party, in and out 
of Parliament, had never from the first believed in Sadleir 
and his band, and had made persistent efforts to expose them. 



1 64 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xil, 

About this same time Mr. Cyrus W. Field, an energetic 
American merchant, came over to this country to explain to 
its leading merchants and scientific men a plan he had for 
constructing an electric telegraph line underneath the 
Atlantic. He was listened to with polite curiosity. Mr. 
Field had, however, a much better reception on the whole 
than M. de Lesseps, who came to England a few months 
later to explain his project for constructing a ship canal 
across the Isthmus of Suez. His proposal was received with 
coldness, and more than coldness, by engineers, capitalists, 
and politicians. 

The political world seemed to have made up its mind for a 
season of quiet. Suddenly a storm broke out. The Speech 
from the Throne at the opening of Parliament, on Feb- 
ruary 3, 1857, stated that acts of violence, insults to the 
British flag, and infraction of treaty rights, committed by 
the local Chinese authorities at Canton, and a pertinacious 
refusal of redress, had rendered it necessary for her Majesty's 
officers in China to have recourse to measures of force to 
obtain satisfaction. The alleged offences of the Chinese 
authorities at Canton had for their single victim the lorcha 
Arrow. The lorcha Arrow was a small boat built on the 
European model. The word ' Lorcha ' is taken from the 
Portuguese settlement at Macao at the mouth of the Canton 
river. It often occurs in treaties with the Chinese authorities. 
On October 8, 1856, a party of Chinese in charge of an 
officer boarded the Arrow, in the Canton river. They took 
off twelve men on a charge of piracy, leaving two men in 
charge of the lorcha. The Arrow was declared by its owners 
to be a British vessel. Our Consul at Canton, Mr. Parkes, 
demanded from Yeh, the Chinese Governor of Canton, the 
return of the men, basing his demand upon the Treaty of 
1843, supplemental to the Treaty of 1842. This treaty did 
not give the Chinese authorities any right to seize Chinese 
offenders, or supposed offenders, on board an English vessel. 
It merely gave them a right to require the surrender of the 
offenders at the hands of the English. The Chinese Gover- 
nor, Yeh, contended, however, that the lorcha was a Chinese 
pirate vessel, which had no right whatever to hoist the flag of 
England. It may be plainly stated at once that the Arrow 
was not an English vessel, but only a Chinese vessel which 
had obtained by false pretences the temporary possession of a 
British flag. Mr. Consul Parkes, however, was fussy, and he 



CH. XII. THE LORCHA 'ARROW: 165 

demanded the instant restoration of the captured men, and he 
sent off to our Plenipotentiary at Hong Kong, Sir John 
Bowring, for authority and assistance in the business. 

Sir John Bowring was a man of considerable ability. At 
one time he seemed to be a candidate for something like 
fame. He had a very large and varied knowledge of Euro- 
pean and Asiatic languages, he had travelled a great deal, and 
had sat in Parliament for some years. He understood political 
economy, and had a good knowledge of trade and commerce. 
He had many friends and admirers, and he set up early for a 
sort of great man. He was full of self-conceit, and without 
any very clear idea of political principles on the large scale. 
Bowring had been Consul for some years at Canton, and he 
had held the post of chief superintendent of trade there. It 
would seem as if his eager self-conceit would not allow him 
to resist the temptation to display himself on the field of 
political action as a great English plenipotentiary bidding 
England be of good cheer and compelling inferior races to 
grovel in the dust before her. He ordered the Chinese 
authorities to surrender all the men taken from the Arrow \ 
and he insisted that an apology should be offered for their 
arrest, and a formal pledge given by the Chinese authorities 
that no such act should ever be committed again. If this 
were not done within forty-eight hours, naval operations were 
to be begun against the Chinese. The Chinese Governor, 
Yeh, sent back all the men, and undertook to promise that for 
the future great care should be taken that no British ship 
should be visited improperly by Chinese officers. But he 
could not offer an apology for the particular case of the Arrow \ 
for he still maintained, as was indeed the fact, that the Arrow 
was a Chinese vessel, and that the English had nothing to do 
with her. Accordingly Sir John Bowring carried out his 
threat, and had Canton bombarded by the fleet which Admiral 
Sir Michael Seymour commanded. From October 23 to 
November 13 naval and military operations were kept up con- 
tinuously. Commissioner Yeh retaliated by foolishly offering 
a reward for the head of every Englishman. 

This news from China created a considerable sensation in 
England. On February 24, 1857, Lord Derby brought forward 
in the House of Lords a motion, comprehensively condemning 
the whole of the proceedings of the British authorities in 
China. The debate would have been memorable if onlj 
for the powerful speech in which the venerable Lord Lynd- 



1 66 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xn. 

hurst supported the motion, and exposed the utter illegality 
of the course pursued by Sir John Bowring. The House 
of Lords rejected the motion of Lord Derby by a majority 
of 146 to 110. On February 26 Mr. Cobden brought for- 
ward a similar motion in the House of Commons. This 
must have been a peculiarly painful task for Mr. Cobden. 
He was an old friend of Sir John Bowring, with whom he 
had always supposed himself to have many or most opinions 
in common. But he followed his convictions as to public 
duty in despite of his personal friendship. The debate was 
remarkable more for the singular political combination which 
it developed as it went on, than even for its varied ability and 
eloquence. Men spoke and voted on the same side who had 
probably never been brought into such companionship before and 
never were afterwards. Mr. Cobden found himself supported by 
Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli, by Mr. Koebuck and Sir 
E. B. Lytton, by Lord John Bussell and Mr. Whiteside, by 
Lord Bobert Cecil, afterwards the Marquis of Salisbury, Sir 
Frederick Thesiger, Mr. Boundell Palmer, afterwards Lord 
Selborne, Mr. Sidney Herbert, and Mr. Milner Gibson. Mr. 
Cobden had probably never dreamed of the amount or the 
nature of the support his motion was destined to receive. The 
vote of censure was carried by 263 votes against 247 — a majority 
of 16. 

Lord Palmerston announced two or three days after that 
the Government had resolved on a dissolution and an appeal 
to the country. Lord Palmerston understood his countrymen. 
He knew that a popular Minister makes himself more popular 
by appealing to the country on the ground that he has been 
condemned by the House of Commons for upholding the 
honour of England and coercing some foreign power some- 
where. In his address to the electors of Tiverton he declared 
that an insolent barbarian, wielding authority at Canton, 
violated the British flag, broke the engagements of treaties, 
offered rewards for the heads of British subjects in that part 
of China, and planned their destruction by murder, assassina- 
tion, and poison. That of course was all- sufficient . The 
' insolent barbarian ' was in itself almost enough. Governor 
Yeh certainly was not a barbarian. His argument on the 
subject of International Law obtained the endorsement of 
Lord Lyndhurst. His way of arguing the political and com- 
mercial case compelled the admiration of Lord Derby. His 
letters form a curious contrast to the documents contributed 



ch. xii, THE LORCHA * ARROW.* 167 

to the controversy by the representatives of British authority 
in China. However, he became for electioneering purposes 
an insolent barbarian; and the story of a Chinese baker 
who was said to have tried to poison Sir John Bowring was 
transfigured into an attempt at the wholesale poisoning of 
Englishmen in China by the express orders of the Chinese 
Governor. Lord Palmerston's victory was complete. Cobden, 
Bright, Milner Gibson, W. J.Fox, Layard, and many other 
leading opponents of the Chinese policy, were left without 
seats. Lord Pahnerston came back to power with renewed and 
redoubled strength. A little war with Persia came to an end 
in time to give him another claim as a conqueror on the 
sympathies of the constituencies. In the Koyal Speech at 
the opening of Parliament it was announced that the differ- 
ences between this country and China still remained unad- 
justed, and that therefore her Majesty had sent to China a 
Plenipotentiary who would be supported by an adequate naval 
and military force if necessary. The Government, however, 
had more serious business with which to occupy themselves 
before they were at liberty to turn to the easy work of coercing 
the Chinese. 

The new Parliament was engaged for some time in passing 
the Act abolishing the ancient jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical 
courts respecting divorce, and setting up a regular court of 
law, the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Court, to deal with 
questions between husband and wife. The passing of the 
Divorce Act was strongly contested in both Houses of Parlia- 
ment, and indeed was secured at last only by Lord Palmerston's 
intimating very significantly that he would keep the Houses 
sitting until the measure had been disposed of. Mr. Gladstone, 
in particular, offered to the bill a most strenuous opposition. 

The year 1857 saw the abolition of the system of trans- 
portation. Transportation as a means of getting rid of part of 
our criminal population dates from the time of Charles II., 
when the judges gave power for the removal of offenders to 
the North American colonies. It was first regularly intro- 
duced into our criminal law in 1717, by an Act of Parliament. 
In 1787 a cargo of criminals was shipped out to Botany Bay, 
on the eastern shore of New South Wales, and near Sydney, 
the present thriving capital of the colony. Afterwards the 
convicts were also sent to Van Diemen's Land, or Tasmania ; 
and to Norfolk Island, a lonely island in the Pacific, some 
eight hundred miles from the New South Wales shore. Norfolk 



168 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. XII. 

Island became the penal settlement for the convicted among 
convicts ; that is to say, criminals who, after transportation 
to New South Wales, committed new crimes there, might be sent 
by the Colonial authorities for sterner punishment to Norfolk 
Island. It looked as if the system ought to be satisfactory in 
every way and to everybody. The convicts were provided with a 
new career, a new country, and a chance of reformation. They 
were usually after a while released from actual durance in the 
penal settlement, and allowed conditionally to find employ- 
ment, and to make themselves, if they could, go.od citizens. 
Their labour, it was thought, would be of great service to the 
colonists. But the colonists very soon began to complain. The 
convicts who had spent their period of probation in hulks or 
prisons generally left those homes of horror with nature so 
brutalised as to make their intrusion into any community of 
decent persons an insufferable nuisance. Pent up in penal 
settlements by themselves, the convicts turned into demons ; 
drafted into an inhabited colony, they were too numerous to 
be wholly absorbed by the population, and they carried their 
contagion along with them. New South Wales and Tasmania 
began to protest-against being made the refuse-ground for our 
scoundrellsm. Only in Western Australia were the people will- 
ing to receive them on any conditions, and Western Australia 
had but scanty natural resources and could in any case harbour 
very few of our outcasts. The discovery of gold in Australia 
settled the question of those colonies being troubled any more 
with our transportation system ; for the greatest enthusiast 
for transportation would hardly propose to send out gangs of 
criminals to a region glowing with the temptations of gold. 

The question then arose what was England to do with the 
criminals whom up to that time she had been able to shovel 
out of her way. All the receptacles were closed but Western 
Australia, and that counted for almost nothing. In 1853 a 
bill was brought in by the Ministry to substitute penal servi- 
tude for transportation, unless in cases where the sentence was 
for fourteen years and upwards. The bill reduced the scale 
of punishment ; that is to say, made a shorter period of penal 
servitude supply the place of a longer term of transportation. 
Lord Palmerston was Home Secretary at this time. It wa3 
during the passing of the bill through the House of Lords that 
Lord Grey suggested the introduction of a modification of the 
ticket- of-leave system which was in practice in the colonies. 
The principle of the ticket-of-leave was that the convict should 



ch. xil. TRANSPORTATION. 169 

not be kept in custody during the whole period of his sentence, 
but that he should be allowed to pass through a period of 
conditional liberty before he obtained his full and unrestricted 
freedom. Now there can be no doubt that the principle of 
the ticket-of-leave is excellent. But it proved on its first trial 
in this country the most utter delusion. It got no fair chance 
at all. It was understood by the whole English public that 
the object of the ticket-of-leave was to enable the authorities 
to give a conditional discharge from custody to a man who had 
in some way proved his fitness for such a relaxation of punish- 
ment, and that the eye of the police would be on him even 
during the period of his conditional release. This was in fact 
the construction put on the Act in Ireland, where accordingly 
the ticket-of-leave system was worked with the most complete 
success under the management of Sir "Walter Crofton, chair- 
man of the Board of Prison Directors. A man who had Sir 
Walter Crofton's ticket-of-leave was known by that very fact 
to have given earnest of good purpose and steady character. 
The system in Ireland was therefore all that its authors could 
have wished it to be. But for some inscrutable reason the 
Act was interpreted in this country as simply giving every 
convict a right, after a certain period of detention, to claim a 
ticket-of-leave, provided he had not grossly violated any of the 
regulations of the prison or misconducted himself in some 
outrageous manner. 

It would be superfluous to examine the working of such a 
system. A number of scoundrels whom the judges had sen- 
tenced to be kept in durance for so many years were without 
any conceivable reason turned loose upon society long before 
the expiration of their sentence. They were in England 
literally turned loose upon society, for it was held by the 
authorities here that it might possibly interfere with the 
chance of a gaol-bird's getting employment, if he were seen 
to be watched by the police. The police therefore were con- 
siderately ordered to refrain from looking after them. Fifty 
per cent, of the ruffians released on ticket-of-leave were after- 
wards brought up for new crimes, and convicted over again. 
Of those who although not actually convicted were believed 
to have relapsed into their old habits, from sixty to seventy 
per cent, relapsed within the first year of their liberation. 
Baron Bramwell stated from the bench that he had had 
instances of criminals coming before him who had three 
sentences overlapping each other. The convict was set free 
8 



S70 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xil, 

on ticket-of-leave, convicted of some new crime, and re-com- 
mitted to prison ; released again on ticket-of-leave, and con- 
victed once again, before the period of his original sentence 
had expired. An alarm sprang up in England. The result of 
the public alarm and the Parliamentary reconsideration of the 
whole subject was the bill brought in by Sir George Grey in 
1857. This measure extended the provisions of the Act of 
1858 by substituting in all cases a sentence of penal servitude 
for one of transportation, abolished the old-fashioned trans- 
portation system altogether, but it left the power to the 
authorities to have penal servitude carried out in any of the 
colonies where it might be thought expedient. The Govern- 
ment had still some idea of utilising Western Australia for 
some of our offenders. But nothing came of this plan, or of 
the clause in the new Act which was passed to favour it ; and 
as a matter of fact transportation was abolished. How the 
amended legislation worked in other respects we shall have an 
opportunity of examining hereafter. 

The Gretna Green marriages became illegal in 1857, their 
doom having been fixed for that time by an Act passed in the 
previous session. Thenceforward such marriages were un- 
lawful, unless one of the parties had lived at least twenty-one 
days previously in Scotland. 



CHAPTEE XIII. 

THE INDIAN MUTINY. 

In May 1857 the great Indian Mutiny shook to its foundations 
the whole fabric of British rule in Hindostan. Throughout 
the greater part of the north and north-west of the great 
Indian peninsula there was a rebellion of the native races 
against English power. It was not by any means a merely 
military mutiny. It was a combination of military grievance, 
national hatred and religious fanaticism, against the English 
occupiers of India. The native princes and the native soldiers 
were in it. The Mohammedan and the Hindoo forgot their 
own religious antipathies to join against the Christian. Let 
us first see what were the actual facts of the outbreak. 
When the improved (Enfield) rifle was introduced into the 
Indian army in 1856, the idea got abroad that the cartridges 
were made up in paper greased with a mixture of cow's fat 



ch. xtii. THE INDIAN MUTINY. 171 

and hog's lard. It appears that the paper was actually- 
greased, but not with any such material as that which religious 
alarm suggested to the native troops. Now a mixture of cow's 
fat and hog's lard would have been, above all things, unsuhV 
able for use in cartridges to be distributed among our Sepoys ; 
for the Hindoo regards the cow with religious veneration, 
and the Mohammedan looks upon the hog with utter loathing. 
In the mind of the former something sacred to him was pro- 
faned ; in that of the latter something unclean and abomin- 
able was forced upon his daily use. Various efforts were made 
to allay the panic among the native troops. The use of the 
cartridges complained of was discontinued by orders issued in 
January 1857. The Governor- General sent out a proclama- 
tion in the following May, assuring the army of Bengal that 
the tales told to them of offence to their religion or injury to 
their caste being meditated by the Government of India were 
all malicious inventions and falsehoods. Still the idea was 
strong among the troops that some design against their 
religion was meditated. A mutinous spirit began to spread 
itself abroad. In March some of the native regiments had 
to be disbanded. In April some executions of Sepoys took 
place for gross and open mutiny. In the same month several 
of the native Bengal cavalry in Meerut refused to use the 
cartridges served out to them, although they had been authori- 
tatively assured that the paper in which the cartridges were 
wrapped had never been touched by any offensive material. 
On May 9 these men were sent to the gaol. They had been 
tried by court-martial, and were sentenced, eighty of them, 
to imprisonment and hard labour for ten years, the remaining 
five to a similar punishment for six years. They had chains 
put on them in the presence of their comrades, who no doubt 
regarded them as martyrs to their religious faith, and they 
were thus publicly marched off to the common gaol. The 
guard placed over the gaol actually consisted of Sepoys. 

The following day, Sunday, May 10, was memorable. 
The native troops in Meerut broke into open mutiny. They 
fired upon their officers, killed a colonel and others, broke 
into the gaol, released their comrades, and massacred several 
of the European inhabitants. The European troops rallied 
and drove them from their cantonments or barracks. Then 
came the momentous event, the turning point of the mutiny : 
the act that marked out its character, and made it what it 
afterwards became. Meerut is an important military station 



172 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xiil 

between the Ganges and the Jumna, thirty- eight miles north- 
east from Delhi. In the vast palace of Delhi, almost a city in 
itself, lived the aged King of Delhi, as he was called ; the 
disestablished, but not wholly disendowed, sovereign, the de- 
scendant of the great Timour, the last representative of the 
Grand Mogul. The mutineers fled along the road to Delhi ; 
and some evil fate directed that they were not to be pursued 
or stopped on their way. Unchecked, unpursued, they burst 
into Delhi, and swarmed into the precincts of the palace of 
the king. They claimed his protection ; they insisted upon 
his accepting their cause and themselves. They proclaimed 
him Emperor of India, and planted the standard of rebellion 
against English rule on the battlements of his palace. They 
had found in one moment a leader, a flag and a cause, and 
the Mutiny was transfigured into a revolutionary war. The 
Sepoy troops, in the city and the cantonments on the Delhi 
ridge, two miles off, and overlooking the city, at once began 
to cast in their lot with the mutineers. The poor old puppet 
whom they set up as their emperor was a feeble creature, 
Borne eighty years of age. He had long been merely a pensioner 
of the East India Company. But he was the representative 
of the great dynasty whose name and effigies had been borne 
by all the coin of India until some twenty years before. He 
stood for legitimacy and divine right ; and he supplied all the 
various factions and sects of which the mutiny was composed, 
or to be composed, with a visible and an acceptable head. If 
the mutineers flying from Meerut had been promptly pursued 
and dispersed, or captured, before they reached Delhi, the tale 
we have to tell might have been shorter and very different. 
But when they reached, unchecked, the Jumna glittering in 
the morning light, ' when they swarmed across the bridge of 
boats that spanned it, and when at length they clamoured 
under the windows of the palace that they had come to restore 
the rule of the Delhi dynasty, they had all unconsciously 
seized one of the great critical moments of history, and con- 
verted a military mutiny into a national and religious war. 

This is the manner in which the Indian Bebellion began 
and assumed its distinct character. Mutinies were not 
novelties in India. There had been some very serious out- 
breaks before the time oi the greased cartridges. But there 
was a combination of circumstances at work to bring about 
this revolt which affected variously but at once the army, the 
princes, and the populations oi India. Let us speak first of 



CH. xiii. THE INDIAN MUTINY. 173 

the army. The Bengal army was very different in its consti- 
tution and conditions from that of Bombay or Madras, the 
other great divisions of Indian Government at that time. In 
the Bengal army, the Hindoo Sepoys were far more numer- 
ous than the Mohammedans, and were chiefly Brahmins of 
high caste; while in Madras and Bombay the army was 
made up, as the Bengal regiments are now, of men of all 
sects and races without discrimination. Until the very year 
before the Mutiny the Bengal soldier was only enlisted for 
service in India, and was exempted from any liability to be 
sent across the seas ; across the black water which the Sepoy 
dreaded and hated to have to cross. No such exemption was 
allowed to the soldiers of Bombay or Madras ; and in July 1856 
an order was issued by the military authorities to the effect that 
future enlistments in Bengal should be for service anywhere 
without limitation. Thus the Bengal Sepoy had not only 
been put in the position of a privileged and pampered favourite, 
but he had been subjected to the indignity and disappointment 
of seeing his privileges taken away from him. 

But we must above all other things take into account, when 
considering the position of the Hindoo Sepoy, the influence of the 
tremendous institution of caste. An Englishman or European 
of any country will have to call his imaginative faculties some- 
what vigorously to his aid in order to get even an idea of the power 
of this monstrous superstition. The man who by the merest 
accident, by the slightest contact with anything that denied, 
had lost caste, was excommunicated from among the living, 
and was held to be for ever more accurst of God. His dearest 
friend, his nearest relation shrank back from him in alarm and 
abhorrence. Now, it had become from various causes a strong 
suspicion in the mind of the Sepoy that there was a deliberate 
purpose in the minds of the English rulers of the country to 
defile the Hindoos, and to bring them all to the dead level of 
one caste or no caste. No doubt there was in many instances 
a lack of consideration shown for the Hindoo's peculiar and 
very perplexing tenets. To many a man fresh from the ways 
of England, the Hindoo doctrines and practices appeared so 
ineffably absurd that he could not believe any human beings 
were serious in their devotion to them, and he took no pains 
to conceal his opinion as to the absurdity of the creed, and the 
hypocrisy of those who professed it. Some of the elder 
officers and civilians were imbued very strongly with a con- 
viction that the work of open proselytism was part of their 



174 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, cii. XHI. 

duty ; and in the best faith and with the purest intentions 
they thus strengthened the growing suspicion that the mind 
of the authorities was set on the defilement of the Hindoos. 
Nor was it among the Hindoos alone that the alarm began to 
be spread abroad. It was the conviction of the Mohammedans 
that their faith and their rites were to be tampered with as well. 
It was whispered among them everywhere that the peculiar bap- 
tismal custom of the Mohammedans was to be suppressed bylaw, 
and Mohammedan women were to be compelled to go unveiled in 
public. The slightest alterations in any system gave fresh con- 
firmation to the suspicions that were afloat among the Hindoos 
and Mussulmans. When a change was made in the arrange- 
ments of the prisons, and the native prisoners were no longer 
allowed to cook for themselves, a murmur went abroad that this 
was the first overt act in the conspiracy to destroy the caste, 
and with it the bodies and souls of the Hindoos. Another 
change must be noticed too. At one time it was intended that 
the native troops should be commanded for the most part by 
native officers. The men would, therefore, have had some- 
thing like sufficient security that their religious scruples were 
regarded and respected. But by degrees the natives were 
shouldered out of the high positions, until at length it became 
practically an army of native rank and file commanded by 
Englishmen. If we remember that a Hindoo sergeant of 
lower caste would, when off parade, often abase himself with 
his forehead in the dust before a Sepoy private who belonged 
to the Brahmin order, we shall have some idea of the per- 
petual collision between military discipline and religious prin- 
ciple which affected the Hindoo members of an army almost 
exclusively commanded by Europeans and Christians. 

We have spoken of the army and of its religious scruples ; 
we must now speak of the territorial and political influences 
which affected the princes and the populations of India. 
Lord Dalhousie had not long left India on the appointment 
of Lord Canning to the Governor- Generalship when the 
Mutiny broke out. Lord Dalhousie was a man of command- 
ing energy, of indomitable courage, with the intellect of a 
ruler of men, and the spirit of a conqueror. He was un- 
doubtedly a great man. He had had some Parliamentary experi- 
ence in England and in both Houses ; and he had been Vice- 
President and subsequently President of the Board of Trade 
under Sir Bobert Peel. He had taken great interest in the framing 
of regulations for the railway legislation of the mania season 



CH. xiii. THE INDIAN MUTINY. 175 

of 1844 and 1845. Towards the close of 1847 Lord Dalhousie 
was sent out to India. Never was there in any country an ad- 
ministration of more successful activity than that of Lord Dal- 
housie. He introduced cheap postage into India ; he made rail- 
ways ; he set up lines of electric telegraph. He devoted much 
of his attention to irrigation, to the making of great roads, to 
the work of the Ganges Canal. He was the founder of a 
comprehensive system of native education. He put down 
infanticide, the Thug system, and he carried out with vigour 
Lord William Bentinck's Act for the suppression of the Suttee 
or burning of widows on the funeral pile of their husbands. 
But Lord Dalhousie was not wholly engaged in such works as 
these. During his few years of office he annexed the Punjaub ; 
he incorporated part of the Burmese territory in our dominions ; 
he annexed Nagpore, Sattara, Jhansi, Berar and Oudh. In the 
Punjaub the annexation was provoked by the murder of some 
of our officers, sanctioned, if not actually ordered, by a native 
prince. Lord Dalhousie marched a force into the Punjaub. 
This land, the ' land of the five waters,' lies at the gateway of 
Hindostan, and was peopled by Mussulmans, Hindoos, and 
Sikhs, the latter a new sect of reformed Hindoos. We found 
arrayed against us not only the Sikhs but our old enemies the 
Afghans. Lord Gough was in command of our forces. He 
fought rashly and disastrously the famous battle of Chillian- 
wallah : he was defeated. But he wholly recovered his position 
by the complete defeat which he inflicted upon the enemy at 
Goojrat. Never was a victory more complete in itself or more 
promptly and effectively followed up. The Sikhs were crushed ; 
the Afghans were driven in wild rout back across their savage 
passes ; and Lord Dalhousie annexed the Punjaub. He pre- 
sented as one token of his conquest the famous diamond, the 
Koh-i-noor, surrendered in evidence of submission by the 
Maharajah of Lahore, to the Crown of England. 

Lord Dalhousie annexed Oudh on the ground that the 
East India Company had bound themselves to defend the 
sovereigns of Oudh against foreign and domestic enemies on 
condition that the State should be governed in such a manner 
as to render the lives and property of its population safe ; and 
that while the Company performed their part of the contract, 
the King of Oudh so governed his dominions as to make his rule 
a curse to his own people, and to all neighbouring territories. 
Other excuses or justifications there were of course in the case 
of each other annexation ; and we shall yet hear some more of 



176 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xill. 

what came of the annexation of Sattara and Jhansi. If, 
however, each of these acts of policy were not only justifiable 
but actually inevitable, none the less must a succession of such 
acts produce a profound emotion among the races in whose 
midst they were accomplished. The populations of India 
became stricken with alarm as they saw their native princes 
thus successively dethroned. The subversion of thrones, the 
annexation of states, seemed to them naturally enough to 
form part of that vast scheme for rooting out all the religions 
and systems of India, concerning which so many vague fore- 
bodings had darkly warned the land. Many of our Sepoys 
came from Oudh and other annexed territories, and little 
reason as they might have had for any personal attachment to 
the subverted dynasties, they yet felt that national resentment 
which any mamier of foreign intervention is almost certain to 
provoke. 

There we're peculiar reasons too why, if religious and 
political distrust did prevail, the moment of Lord Canning's 
accession to the supreme authority in India should seem inviting 
and favourable for schemes of sedition. The Afghan war had 
told the Sepoy that British troops are not absolutely invincible 
in battle. The impression produced almost everywhere in 
India by the Crimean war was a conviction that the strength 
of England was on the wane. The Sepoy saw that the English 
force in Northern India was very small ; and he really believed 
that it was small because England had no more men to send 
there. In his mind Eussia was the great rising and conquer- 
ing country ; England was sinking into decay ; her star waning 
before the strong glare of the portentous northern light. 
Moreover Lord Canning had hardly assumed office as Gover- 
nor-General of India, when the dispute occurred between the 
British and Chinese authorities at Canton, and almost at the 
same moment war was declared against Persia by proclamation 
of the Governor- General at Calcutta, in consequence of the 
Shah having marched an army into Herat and besieged it, in 
violation of a treaty with Great Britain made in 1853. A body 
of troops was sent from Bombay to the Persian Gulf, and 
shortly after General Outram left Bombay with additional 
troops, as Commander-in-Chief of the field force in Persia. 
Therefore, in the opening days of 1857, it was known among 
the native populations of India that the East India Company 
was at war with Persia and that England had on her hands a 
quarrel with China. The native army of the three Presidencies 



CH. xhi. THE INDIAN MUTINY. 177 

taken together was nearly three hundred thousand, while the 
Europeans were but forty- three thousand, of whom some five 
thousand had just been told off for duty in Persia. It must 
be owned that, given the existence of a seditious spirit, it 
would have been hardly possible for it to find conditions more 
seemingly favourable and tempting. There can be no doubt 
that a conspiracy for the subversion of the English govern- 
ment in India was afoot during the early days of 1857, and 
possibly for long before. The story of the mysterious 
chupatties is well known. The chupatties are small cakes 
of unleavened bread, and they were found to be distributed 
with amazing rapidity and precision of system at one time 
throughout the native villages of the north and north-west. 
In no instance were they distributed among the popula- 
tions of still- existing native States. They were only sent 
among the villages over which English rule extended. A 
native messenger brought two of these mysterious cakes to 
the watchman or headman of a village, and bade him to 
have others prepared like them, and to pass them on to 
another place. There could be no doubt that the chupatties 
conveyed a warning to all who received them that something 
Btrange was about to happen, and bade them to be prepared 
for whatever might befall. 

The news of the outbreak at Meerut, and the proclamation 
in Delhi, broke upon Calcutta with the shock of a thunder 
clap. For one or two days Calcutta was a prey to mere panic. 
The alarm was greatly increased by the fact that the dethroned 
King of Oudh was living near to the city, at Garden Eeach, a 
fewmiles down the Hooghly. The inhabitants of Calcutta, when 
the news of the Mutiny came, were convinced that the palace 
of the King of Oudh was the head-quarters of rebellion, and 
were expecting the moment when, from the residence at 
Garden Eeach, an organised army of murderers was to be 
sent forth to capture and destroy the ill-fated city, and to 
make its streets run with the blood of its massacred inhabi- 
tants. Lord Canning took the prudent course of having 
the king with his prime minister removed to the Governor- 
General's own residence within the precincts of Fort William. 
If ever the crisis found the man, Lord Canning was the man 
called for by that crisis in India. He had all the divining 
genius of the true statesman ; the man who can rise to the 
height of some unexpected and new emergency ; and he had 
the cool courage of a practised conqueror. Among all the 
8* 



178 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xm. 

distracting counsels and wild stories poured in upon him from 
every side, lie kept his mind clear. He never gave way either 
to anger or to alarm. If he ever showed a little impatience, 
it was only where panic would too openly have proclaimed 
itself by counsels of wholesale cruelty. He could not, per- 
haps, always conceal from frightened people the fact that he 
rather despised their terrors. Throughout the whole of that 
excited period there were few names, even among the chiefs 
of rebellion, on which fiercer denunciation was showered by 
Englishmen than the name of Lord Canning. Because he 
would not listen to the bloodthirsty clamours of mere frenzy, 
he was nicknamed ' Clemency Canning/ as if clemency were 
an attribute of which a man ought to be ashamed. Indeed, 
for some time people wrote and spoke, not merely in India 
but in England, as if clemency were a thing to be reprobated, 
like treason or crime. For a while it seemed a question of 
patriotism which would propose the most savage and sanguinary 
measures of revenge. Mr. Disraeli, to do him justice, raised 
his voice in remonstrance against the wild passions of the 
hour, even when these passions were strongest and most 
general. He declared that if such a temper were encouraged 
we ought to take down from our altars the image of Christ 
and raise the statue of Moloch there. If people were so 
carried away in England, where the danger was far remote, 
we can easily imagine what were the fears and passions 
roused in India, where the terror was or might be at the 
door of everyone. Lord Canning was gravely embarrassed 
by the wild urgencies and counsels of distracted Englishmen, 
who were furious with him because he even thought of 
distinguishing friend from foe where native races were con- 
cerned. But he bore himself with perfect calmness. He 
was greatly assisted and encouraged in his counsels by 
his brave and noble wife, who proved herself in every way 
worthy to be the helpmate of such a man at such a crisis. 
He did not for a moment under- estimate the danger ; but 
neither did he exaggerate its importance. He never allowed 
it to master him. He looked upon it with the quiet, resolute 
eye of one who is determined to be the conqueror in the 
struggle. 

Lord Canning saw that the one important thing was to 
strike at Delhi, which had proclaimed itself the head-quarters 
of the rebellion. He knew that English troops were on their 
way to China for the purpose of wreaking the wrongs of 



CH. xiii. THE INDIAN MUTINY. 17$ 

English subjects there, and he took on his own responsibility 
the bold step of intercepting them, and calling them to the 
work of helping to put down the Mutiny in India. The dis- 
pute with China he thought could well afford to wait, but 
with the Mutiny it must be now or never. India could not 
wait for reinforcements brought all the way from England. 
Lord Canning knew well enough, as well as the wildest alarmist 
could know, that the rebel flag must be forced to fly from 
some field before that help came, or it would fly over the dead 
bodies of those who then represented English authority in 
India. He had, therefore, no hesitation in appealing to Lord 
Elgin, the Envoy in charge of the Chinese expedition, to stop 
the troops that were on their way to China, and lend them to 
the service of India at such a need. Lord Elgin had the 
courage and the wisdom to assent to the appeal at once. 
Fortune, too, was favourable to Canning in more ways than 
one. The Persian war was of short duration. Sir Jamea 
Outram was soon victorious, and Outram, therefore, and hi3 
gallant companions, Colonel Jacob and Colonel Havelock, 
were able to lend their invaluable services to the Governor- 
General of India. Most important for Lord Canning's pur- 
poses was the manner in which the affairs of the Punjaub 
were managed at this crisis. The Punjaub was under the 
administration of one of the ablest public servants India has 
ever had — Sir John, afterwards Lord Lawrence. John 
Lawrence had from his youth been in the Civil Service of 
the East India Company ; and when Lord Dalhousie annexed 
the Punjaub, he made Lawrence and his soldier-brother — the 
gallant Sir Henry Lawrence — two out of a board of three for 
the administration of the affairs of the newly- acquired pro- 
vince. Afterwards Sir John Lawrence was named the Chief 
Commissioner of the Punjaub, and by the promptitude and 
energy of himself and his subordinates, the province was 
completely saved for English rule at the outbreak of the 
Mutiny. Fortunately, the electric telegraph extended from 
Calcutta to Lahore, the chief city of the Punjaub. On May 
11 the news of the outbreak at Meerut was brought to the 
authorities at Lahore. As it happened, Sir John Lawrence 
was then away at Kawul Pindee, in the Upper Punjaub ; but 
Mr. Robert Montgomery, the Judicial Commissioner at Lahore, 
was invested with plenary power, and he showed that he could 
use it to advantage. Meean Meer is a large military canton- 
ment five or six miles from Lahore, and there were then some 



180 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xiil 

four thousand native troops there, with only about thirteen 
hundred Europeans ot the Queen's and the Company's service. 
There was no time to be lost. While the Punjaub held firm 
it was like a barrier raised at one side of the rebellious move- 
ment, not merely preventing it from going any farther in that 
direction, but keeping it pent up until the moment came when 
the blow from the other direction could fall upon it. The 
first thing to be done to strike effectively at the rebellion was 
do make an attack on Delhi ; and the possession of the Pun- 
jaub was of inestimable advantage to the authorities for that 
purpose. There was no actual reason to assume that the 
Sepoys in Meean Meer intended to join the rebellion. There 
would be a certain danger of converting them into rebels if 
any rash movement were to be made for the purpose of guard- 
ing against treachery on their part. Either way was a serious 
responsibility, a momentous risk. The authorities soon made 
up their minds. Any risk would be better than that of leaving 
it in the power of the native troops to join the rebellion. A 
ball and supper were to be given at Lahore that night. To 
avoid creating any alarm it was arranged that the entertain- 
ments should take place. During the dancing and feasting 
Mr. Montgomery held a council of the leading officials of 
Lahore, civil and military, and it was resolved at once to dis- 
arm the native troops. A parade was ordered for daybreak at 
Meean Meer ; and on the parade ground an order was given 
for a military movement which brought the heads of four 
columns of the native troops in front of twelve guns charged 
with grape, the artillerymen with their port-fires lighted, and 
the soldiers of one of the Queen's regiments standing behind 
with loaded muskets. A command was given to the Sepoys 
:o pile arms. They had immediate death before them if they 
disobeyed. They stood literally at the cannon's mouth. They 
piled their arms, which were borne away at once in carts by 
European soldiers, and all chances of a rebellious movement 
were over in that province, and the Punjaub was saved. 
Something of the same kind was done at Mooltan, in the 
Lower Punjaub, later on ; and the province, thus assured to 
English civil and military authority, became a basis for some 
of the most important operations by which the Mutiny was 
crushed, and the sceptre of India restored to the Queen. 

Within little more than a fortnight from the occupation of 
Delhi by the rebels, the British forces under General Anson, 
the Commander-in-Chief, were advancing on that city. The 



CH. xin. THE INDIAN MUTINY, 181 

commander did not live to conduct any of the operations. 
He died of cholera almost at the beginning of the march. 
The siege of Delhi proved long and difficult. Another general 
died, another had to give up his command, before the city 
was recaptured. It was justly considered by Lord Canning 
and by all the authorities as of the utmost importance that 
Delhi should be taken before the arrival of great reinforce- 
ments from home. Meanwhile the rebellion was breaking 
out at new points almost everywhere in these northern and 
north-western regions. On May 30 the Mutiny declared itself 
at Lucknow. Sir Henry Lawrence was governor of Oudli. 
He endeavoured to drive the rebels from the place, but the 
numbers of the mutineers were overwhelming. He had under 
his command, too, a force partly made up of native troops, 
and some of these deserted him in the battle. He had to 
retreat and to fortify the Kesidency at Lucknow, and remove 
all the Europeans, men, women, and children thither, and 
patiently stand a siege. Lawrence himself had not long to 
endure the siege. On July 2 he had been up with the dawn, 
and after a great amount of work he lay on the sofa, not, as 
it has been well said, to rest, but to transact busmess in a 
recumbent position. His nephew and another officer were with 
him. Suddenly a great crash was heard, and the room was 
filled with smoke and dust. One of his companions was flung 
to the ground. A shell had burst. When there was silence 
the officer who had been flung down called out, ' Sir Henry, 
are you hurt ? ' 'I am killed,' was the answer that came 
faintly but firmly from Sir Henry Lawrence's lips. The shell 
had wounded him in the thigh so fearfully as to leave surgery 
no chance of doing anything for his relief. On the morning 
of July 4 he died calmly and in perfect submission to the will of 
Providence. He had made all possible arrangements for his 
successor, and for the work to be done. He desired that on 
his tomb should be engraven merely the words, ' Here lies 
Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty.' The epitaph was 
a simple truthful summing up of a simple truthful career. The 
man, however, was greater than the career. Lawrence had 
not opportunity to show in actual result the greatness of spirit 
that was in him. The immense influence he exercised over all 
who came within his reach bears testimony to his strength and 
nobleness of character better than any of the mere successes 
which his biographer can record. He was full of sympathy. 
His soul was alive to the noblest and purest aspirations. ' It 



182 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xm, 

is the due admixture of romance and reality,' he was himself 
accustomed to say, ' that best carries a man through life.' No 
professional teacher or philosopher ever spoke a truer sentence. 
As one of his many admirers says of him — ' what he said and 
wrote, he did, or rather he was.' Let the bitterest enemy of 
England write the history of her rule in India, and set down 
as against her every "wrong that was done in her name, from 
those which Burke denounced to those which the Madras 
Commission exposed, he will have to say that men, many men, 
like Henry Lawrence, lived and died devoted to the cause of 
that rule, and the world will take account of the admission. 

During the later days of Sir Henry Lawrence's life it had 
another trouble added to it by the appeals which were made to 
him from Cawnpore for a help which he could not give. The 
city of Cawnpore stands in the Doab, a peninsula between the 
Ganges and the Jumna, and is built on the south bank of the 
Ganges, there nearly a quarter of a mile broad in the dry 
season, and more than a mile across when swelled by the rains. 
In 1801, the territory lapsed into the possession of the Company. 
From that time it took rank as one of our first-class military 
stations. The city commanded the bridge over which passed 
the high road to Lucknow, the capital of our new province. 
The distance from Cawnpore to Lucknow is about fifty miles 
as the bird flies. At the time when the Mutiny broke out 
in Meerut there were some three thousand native soldiers 
in Cawnpore, consisting of two regiments of infantry, one 
of cavalry, and a company of artillerymen. There were 
about three hundred officers and soldiers of English birth. 
The European or Eurasian population, including women 
and children, numbered about one thousand. These con- 
sisted of the officials, the railway people, some merchants 
and shopkeepers and their families. The native town had 
about sixty thousand inhabitants. The garrison was under 
the command of Sir Hugh Wheeler, a man of some seventy- 
five years of age, among the oldest of an old school of 
Bengal officers. The revolt was looked for at Cawnpore from 
the moment when the news came of the rising at Meerut ; 
and it was not long expected before it came. Sir Hugh 
Wheeler applied to Sir Henry Lawrence for help ; Lawrence 
of course could not spare a man. Then Sir Hugh Wheeler 
remembered that he had a neighbour whom he believed to be 
friendly, despite of very recent warnings from Sir Henry 
Lawrence and others to the contrary. He called this neigh- 



CH. XIII. THE INDIAN MUTINY. 183 

bour to his assistance, and his invitation was promptly answered. 
The Nana Sahib came with two guns and some three hundred 
men to lend a helping hand to the English commander. 

The Nana Sahib resided at Bithoor, a small town twelve 
miles up the river from Cawnpore. He represented a griev- 
ance. Bajee Bao, Peishwa of Poonah, was the last prince of 
one of the great Mahratta dynasties. The East India Com- 
pany believed him guilty of treachery against them, of bad 
government of his dominions, and so forth ; and they found 
a reason for dethroning him. He was assigned, however, 
a residence in Bithoor, and a large pension. He had no chil- 
dren, and he adopted as his heir Seereek Dhoondoo Punth, 
the man who will be known to all time by the infamous name 
of Nana Sahib. According to Hindoo belief it is needful for 
a man's eternal welfare that he leave a son behind him to 
perform duly his funeral rites ; and the adoption of a son 
is recognised as in every sense conferring on the adopted all 
the rights that a child of the blood could have. Bajee diea 
in 1851, and Nana Sahib claimed to succeed to all his posses- 
sions. LordDalhousie had shown in many instances a strangely 
unwise disregard of the principle of adoption. The claim of the 
Nana to the pension was disallowed. Nana Sahib sent a con- 
fidential agent to London to push his claim there. This 
man was a clever and handsome young Mohammedan who had 
at one time been a servant in an Anglo-Indian family, and had 
picked up a knowledge of French and English. His name 
was Azimoolah Khan. This emissary visited London in 1854, 
and became a lion of the fashionable season. He did not suc- 
ceed in winning over the Government to take any notice of the 
claims of his master, but being very handsome and of sleek 
and alluring manners, he became a favourite in the drawing- 
rooms of the metropolis, and was under the impression that an 
unlimited number of Englishwomen of rank were dying with 
love for him. On his way home he visited Constantinople and 
the Crimea. It was then a dark hour for the fortunes of Eng- 
land in the Crimea, and Azimoolah Khan swallowed with glad 
and greedy ear all the alarmist rumours that were afloat in 
Stamboul about the decay of England's strength and the im- 
pending domination of Kussian power over Europe and Asia. 
The Western visit of this man was not an event without 
important consequences. He doubtless reported to his master 
that the strength of England was on the wane ; and while 
gtimulating his hatred and revenge, stimulated also his conn- 



184 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. XIII. 

dence in the chances of an effort to gratify both. With Azi- 
moolah Khan's mission and its results ended the hopes of Nana 
Sahib for the success of his claims, and began, we may pre- 
sume, his resolve to be revenged. 

Nana Sahib, although his claim on the English Govern- 
ment was not allowed, was still rich. He had the large pri- 
vate property of the man who had adopted him, and he had 
the residence at Bithoor. He kept up a sort of princely state. 
He never visited Cawnpore ; the reason being, it is believed, 
that he would not have been received there with princely 
honours. But he was especially lavish of his attentions to 
English visitors, and his invitations went far and wide among 
the military and civil servants of the Crown and the Com- 
pany. He cultivated the society of English men and women ; 
he showered his civilities upon them. He did not speak or 
even understand English, but he took a great interest in 
English history, customs, and literature. He was luxurious 
in the most thoroughly Oriental fashion ; and Oriental luxury 
implies a great deal more than any experience of Western 
luxury would suggest. At the time with which we are dealing 
he was only about thirty-six years of age, but he was prema- 
turely heavy and fat, and seemed to be as incapable of active 
exertion as of unkindly feeling. There can be little doubt 
that all this time he was a dissembler of more than common 
Eastern dissimulation. It appears almost certain that while 
he was lavishing his courtesies and kindnesses upon English- 
men without discrimination, his heart was burning with a 
hatred to the whole British race. A sense of his wrongs had 
eaten him up. It is a painful thing to say, but it is necessary 
to the truth of this history, that his wrongs were genuine. 
He had been treated with injustice. According to all the 
recognised usages of his race and his religion, he had a claim 
indefeasible in justice to the succession which had been 
unfairly and unwisely denied to him. It was to Nana Sahib, 
then, that poor old Sir Hugh Wheeler in the hour of his 
distress applied for assistance. Most gladly, we can well 
believe, did the Nana come. He established himself in 
Cawnpore with his guns and his soldiers. Sir Hugh Wheeler 
had taken refuge, when the Mutiny broke out, in an old 
military hospital with mud walls, scarcely four feet high, 
hastily thrown up around it, and a few guns of various calibre 
placed in position on the so-called entrenchments. Within 
these almost shadowy and certainly crumbling entrenchments 



ch. xiii. THE INDIAN MUTINY. 185 

were gathered about a thousand persons, of whom 465 were 
men of every age and profession. The married women and 
grown daughters were about 280 ; the children about the 
same number. Of the men there were probably 400 who 
could fight. 

As soon as Nana Sahib's presence became known in 
Cawnpore he was surrounded by the mutineers, who insisted 
that he must make common cause with them and become one 
of their leaders. He put himself at their disposal. He gave 
notice to Sir Hugh Wheeler that if the entrenchments were 
not surrendered, they would be instantly attacked. They were 
attacked. A general assault was made upon the miserable mud 
walls on June 12, but the resistance was heroic and the assault 
failed. It was after that assault that the garrison succeeded 
in sending a message to Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow, 
craving for the aid which it was absolutely impossible for him 
to give. From that time the fire of the mutineer army on the 
English entrenchments never ceased. Whenever a regular 
attack was made the assailants invariably came to grief. The 
little garrison, thinning in numbers every day and almost 
every hour, held out with splendid obstinacy, and always sent 
those who assailed it scampering back — except of course for 
such assailants as perforce kept their ground by the persuasion 
of the English bullets. The little population of women and 
children behind the entrenchments had no roof to shelter 
them from the fierce Indian sun. They cowered under the 
scanty shadow of the low walls often at the imminent peril 
of the unceasing Sepoy bullets. The only water for their 
drinking was to be had from a single well, at which the guns 
of the assailants were unceasingly levelled. To go to the 
well and draw water became the task of self-sacrificing heroes, 
who might with better chances of safety have led a forlorn 
hope. The water which the fainting women and children 
drank might have seemed to be reddened by blood ; for only at 
the price of blood was it ever obtained. It may seem a trivial 
detail, but it will count for much in a history of the sufferings 
of delicately nurtured English women, that from the begin- 
ning of the siege of the Cawnpore entrenchments to its tragic 
end, there was not one spongeful of water to be had for the 
purposes of personal cleanliness. The inmates of that ghastly 
garrison were dying like flies. One does not know which to 
call the greater ; the suffering of the women or the bravery of 
the men. 



186 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xni. 

A conviction began to spread among the mutineers that 
it was of no use attempting to conquer these terrible British 
sahibs ; that so long as one of them was alive he would be as 
formidable as a wild beast in its lair. The Sepoys became 
unwilling to come too near the low crumbling walls of the 
entrenchment. Those walls might have been leaped over as 
easily as that of Eomulus ; but of what avail to know that, 
when from behind them always came the fatal fire of the 
Englishmen ? It was no longer easy to get the mutineers to 
attempt anything like an assault. The English themselves 
began to show a perplexing kind of aggressive enterprise, and 
took to making little sallies in small numbers indeed, but with 
astonishing effect, on any bodies of Sepoys who happened to 
be anywhere near. Utterly, overwhelmingly, preposterously 
outnumbered as the Englishmen were, there were moments 
when it began to seem almost possible that they might actually 
keep back their assailants until some English army could come 
to their assistance and take a terrible vengeance upon Cawn- 
pore. Nana Sahib began to find that he could not take by 
assault those wretched entrenchments ; and he could not wait 
to starve the garrison out. He therefore resolved to treat with 
the English. The terms, it is believed, were arranged by the 
advice and assistance of Tantia Topee, his lieutenant, and 
Azimoolah Khan, the favourite of English drawing-rooms. 
An offer was sent to the entrenchments, the terms of which 
are worthy of notice. ' All those,' it said, ' who are in no 
way connected with the acts of Lord Dalhousie, and who are 
willing to lay down their arms, shall receive a safe passage to 
Allahabad.' The terms had to be accepted. There was nothing 
else to be done. The English people were promised, during 
the course of the negotiations, sufficient supplies of food and 
boats to carry them to Allahabad, which was now once more 
in the possession of England. The relief was unspeakable 
for the survivors of that weary defence. The women, the 
children, the wounded, the sick, the dying, welcomed any 
terms of release. Not the faintest suspicion crossed any 
mind of the treachery that was awaiting them. How, in- 
deed, could there be any such suspicion ? Not for years and 
years had even Oriental warfare given example of such 
practice as that which Nana Sahib and the graceful and 
civilised Azimoolah Khan had now in preparation. 

The time for the evacuation of the garrison came. The 
boats were in readiness on the Ganges. The long procession 



ch. xiii. THE INDIAN MUTINY. 187 

of men, women, and children passed slowly down ; very 
slowly in some instances, because of the number of sick and 
wounded by which its progress was encumbered. Some of 
the chief among the Nana's counsellors took their stand in a 
little temple on the margin of the river, to superintend the 
embarkation and the work that was to follow it. Nana Sahib 
himself was not there. It is understood that he purposely 
kept away ; he preferred to hear of the deed when it was 
done. His faithful lieutenant, Tantia Topee, had given 
orders, it seems, that when a trumpet sounded, some work, 
for which he had arranged, should begin. The wounded and 
the women were got into the boats in the first instance. The 
officers and men were scrambling in afterwards. Suddenly 
the blast of a trumpet was heard. The boats were of the 
kind common on the rivers of India, covered with roofs of 
straw, and looking, as some accounts describe them, not 
unlike floating haystacks. The moment the bugle sounded, 
the straw of the boat-roofs blazed up, and the native rowers 
began to make precipitately for the shore. They had set fire 
to the thatch, and were now escaping from the flames they 
had purposely lighted up. At the same moment there came 
from both shores of the river thick showers of grapeshot and 
musketry. The banks of the Ganges seemed in an instant 
alive with shot ; a very rain of bullets poured in upon the 
devoted inmates of the boats. To add to the horrors of the 
moment, if, indeed, it needed any addition, nearly all the 
boats stuck fast in mudbanks, and the occupants became fixed 
targets for the fire of their enemies. Only three of the boats 
floated. Two of these drifted to the Oudh shore, and those 
on board them were killed at once. The third floated farther 
along with the stream, reserved for further adventures and 
horrors . The firing ceased when Tantia Topee and his con- 
federates thought that enough had been done ; and the women 
and children who were still alive were brought ashore and 
carried in forlorn procession back again through the town 
where they had suffered so much, and which they had hoped 
that they were leaving for ever. They were about 125 in 
number, women and children. Some of them were wounded. 
There were a few well-disposed natives who saw them and. 
were sorry for them ; who had perhaps served them, and ex- 
perienced their kindness in other days, and who now had 
some grateful memory of it, which they dared not express by 
any open profession of sympathy. Certain of these after- 



188 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xiii. 

wards described the English ladies as they saw them pass. 
They were bedraggled and dishevelled, these poor English 
women ; their clothes were in tatters ; some of them were 
wounded, and the blood was trickling from their feet and legs. 
They were carried to a place called the Savada House, a large 
building, once a charitable institution bearing the name of 
Salvador, which had been softened into Savada by Asiatic pro- 
nunciation. On board the one boat which had floated with 
the stream were more than a hundred persons. The boat was 
attacked by a constant fire from both banks as it drifted along. 
At length a party of some twelve men, or thereabouts, landed 
with the bold object of attacking their assailants and driving 
them back. In their absence the boat was captured by some 
of the rebel gangs, and the women and the wounded were 
brought back to Cawnpore. Some sixty men, twenty-five 
women, and four children were thus recaptured. The men 
were immediately shot. It may be said at once, that of the 
gallant little party who went ashore to attack the enemy, hand 
to hand, four finally escaped, after adventures so perilous and 
so extraordinary that a professional story-teller would hardly 
venture to make them part of a fictitious narrative. 

The Nana had now a considerable number of English 
women in his hands. They were removed, after a while, 
from their first prison-house to a small building north of the 
canal, and between the native city and the Ganges. Here 
they were cooped up in the closest manner, except when some 
of them were taken out in the evening and set to the work of 
grinding corn for the use of their captors. Cholera and 
dysentery set in among these unhappy sufferers, and some 
eighteen women and seven children died. Let it be said for 
the credit of womanhood, that the royal widows, the relicts of 
the Nana's father by adoption, made many efforts to protect 
the captive Englishwomen, and even declared that they would 
throw themselves and their children from the palace windows 
if any harm were done to the prisoners. We have only to 
repeat here, that as a matter of fact no indignities, other than 
that of the compulsory corn-grinding, were put upon the 
English ladies. They were doomed, one and all, to suffer 
death, but they were not, as at one time was believed in 
England, made to long for death as an escape from shame. 
Meanwhile the prospects of the Nana and his rebellion were 
growing darker and darker. He must have begun to know 
by this time that he had no chance of .establishing himself 



CH. xni. THE INDIAN MUTINY. 189 

as a ruler anywhere in India. The English had not been 
swept out of the country with a rush. The first flood of the 
Mutiny had broken on their defences, and already the tide 
was falling. The Nana well knew it never would rise again 
to the same height in his day. The English were coming on. 
Neill had recaptured Allahabad, and cleared the country all 
round it of any traces of rebellion. Havelock was now 
moving forward from Allahabad towards Cawnpore, with six 
cannon and about a thousand English soldiers. Very small 
in pohit of numbers was that force when compared with that 
which Nana Sahib could even still rally round him ; but no 
one in India now knew better than Nana Sahib what extra- 
ordinary odds the English could afford to give with the 
certainty of winning. Havelock's march was a series of 
victories, although he was often in such difficulties that the 
slightest display of real generalship or even soldiership on 
the part of his opponents might have stopped his advance. 
He had one encounter with the lieutenant of the Nana, who 
had under his command nearly four thousand men and twelve 
guns, and Havelock won a complete victory in about ten 
minutes. He defeated in the same off-hand way various other 
chiefs of the Mutiny. He was almost at the gates of Cawnpore. 
Then it appears to have occurred to the Nana, or to have 
been suggested to him, that it would be inconvenient to have 
his English captives recaptured by the enemy, their country- 
men. It may be that in the utter failure of all his plans and 
hopes he was anxious to secure some satisfaction, to satiate 
his hatred in some way. It was intimated to the prisoners 
that they were to die. Among them were three or four men. 
These were called out and shot. Then some Sepoys were 
sent to the house where the women still were, and ordered to 
fire volleys through the windows. This they did, but 
apparently without doing much harm. Some persons are of 
opinion, from such evidence as can be got, that the men 
purposely fired high above the level of the floor, to avoid 
killing any of the women and children. In the evening five 
men, two Hindoo peasants, two Mohammedan butchers, and 
one Mohammedan wearing the red uniform of the Nana's body- 
guard, were sent up to the house, and entered it. Incessant 
shrieks were heard to come from that fearful house. The 
Mohammedan soldier came out to the door holding in his hand 
a sword-hilt from which the blade had been broken off, and 
be exchanged this now useless instrument for a weapon in 



190 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xiii. 

proper condition. Not once but twice this performance took 
place. Evidently the task imposed on these men was hard 
work for the sword-blades. After a while the five men came 
out of the now quiet house and locked the doors behind them. 
During that time they had killed nearly all the English women 
and children. They had slaughtered them like beasts in the 
shambles. In the morning the five men came again with 
several attendants to clear out the house of the captives. 
Their task was to tumble all the bodies into a dry well beyond 
some trees that grew near. Any of the bodies that had 
clothes worth taking were carefully stripped before being con* 
signed to this open grave. When Cawnpore was afterwards 
taken by the English those who had to look down into that 
well saw a sight the like of which no man in modern days 
had ever seen elsewhere. No attempt shall be made to 
describe it here. "When the house of the massacre itself was 
entered, its floors and its walls told with terrible plainness of 
the scene they had witnessed. The plaster of the walls was 
scored and seamed with sword-slashes low down and in the 
corners, as if the poor women had crouched down in their 
mortal fright with some wild hope of escaping the blows. 
The floor was strewn with scraps of dresses, women's faded 
ragged finery, frilling, underclothing, broken combs, shoes, 
and tresses of hair. There were some small and neatly 
severed curls of hair too which had fallen on the ground, but 
evidently had never been cut off by the rude weapon of a 
professional butcher. These doubtless were keepsakes that 
had been treasured to the last, parted with only when life and 
all were going. One or two scraps of paper were found which 
recorded deaths and such like interruptions of the monotony 
of imprisonment ; but nothing more. The well of horrors 
has since been filled up, and a memorial chapel surrounded 
by a garden built upon the spot. 

Something, however, has still to be told of the Nana and 
his fortunes. He made one last stand against the victorious 
English in front of Cawnpore, and was completely defeated. 
He galloped into the city on a bleeding and exhausted horse ; 
he fled thence to Bithoor, his residence. He had just time 
left, it is said, to order the murder of a separate captive, a 
woman who had previously been overlooked or purposely left 
behind. Then he took flight in the direction of the Nepaulese 
marches ; and he soon disappears from history. Nothing of 
bis fate was ever known. Many years afterwards England 



CH. XIII. THE INDIAN MUTINY. Mji 

and India were treated to a momentary sensation by a story 
of the capture of Nana Sahib. But the man who was arrested 
proved to be an entirely different person ; and indeed from the 
moment of his arrest few believed him to be the long-lost 
murderer of the English women. In days more superstitious 
than our own, popular faith would have found an easy ex- 
planation of the mystery which surrounded the close of Nana 
Sahib's career. He had done, it would have been said, the 
work of a fiend ; and he had disappeared as a fiend would do 
when his task was accomplished. 

The capture of Delhi was effected on September 20. Bri- 
gadier-General Nicholson led the storming columns, and paid 
for his bravery and success the price of a gallant life. Nicholson 
was one of the bravest and most capable officers whom the war 
produced. It is worthy of record as an evidence of the temper 
aroused even in men from whom better things might have been 
expected, that Nicholson strongly urged the passing of a law 
to authorise flaying alive, impalement, or burning of the mur- 
derers of the women and children in Delhi. He urged this 
view again and again, and deliberately argued it on grounds 
alike of policy and principle. The fact is recorded here not 
in mere disparagement of a brave soldier, but as an illustra- 
tion of the manner in which the old elementary passions of 
man's untamed condition can return upon him in his pride 
of civilisation and culture, and make him their slave again. 
The taking of Delhi was followed by an act of unpardonable 
bloodshed. A young officer, Hodson, the leader of the little 
force known as Hodson's Horse, was acting as chief of the In- 
telligence Department. He was especially distinguished by an 
extraordinary blending of cool, calculating craft and reckless 
daring. By the help of native spies Hodson discovered that 
when Delhi was taken the king and his family had taken refuge 
in the tomb of the Emperor Hoomayoon, a structure which, 
with the buildings surrounding and belonging to it, constituted 
a sort of suburb in itself. Hodson went boldly to this place 
with a few of his troopers and captured the three royal princes 
of Delhi. He tried them as rebels taken red-handed, and bor- 
rowing a carbine from one of his troopers, he shot them dead 
with his own hand. Their corpses, half -naked, were exposed 
for some days at one of the gates of Delhi. Hodson was killed 
not long after ; we might well wish to be free to allow him to 
rest without censure in his untimely grave. He was a brave 
and clever soldier, but one who unfortunately allowed a fierce 



192 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. XIII. 

temper to over-rule the better instincts of his nature and the 
guidance of a cool judgment. 

General Havelock made his way to the relief of Lucknow. 
Sir James Outram, who had returned from Persia, had been sent 
to Oudh with complete civil and military authority. He would 
in the natural order of things have superseded Havelock, but 
he refused to rob a brave and successful comrade of the fruits 
of his toil and peril," and he accompanied Havelock as a volun- 
teer. Havelock was enabled to continue his victorious march, 
and on September 25 he was able to relieve the besieged English 
at Lucknow. His coming, it can hardly be doubted, saved the 
women and children from such a massacre as that of Cawnpore ; 
but Havelock had not the force that might have driven the rebels 
out of the field, and if England had not been prepared to make 
greater efforts for the rescue of her imperilled people, it is but 
too probable that the troops whom Havelock brought to the relief 
of Lucknow would only have swelled the number of the victims. 
But in the meantime the stout soldier, Sir Colin ' Campbell, 
whom we have already heard of in the Crimean campaign, had 
been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Indian forces, and 
had arrived in India. He set out for Lucknow. He had under 
his command only some 5,000 men, a force miserably inferior 
in number to that of the enemy ; but in those days an English 
officer thought himself in good condition to attack if the foe 
did not outnumber him by more than four or five to one. A 
series of actions was fought by Sir Colin Campbell and his little 
force attacking the enemy on one side, who were attacked at the 
same time by the besieged garrison of the residency. On the 
morning of November 17, by the combined efforts of both forces, 
the enemy was dislodged. Sir Colin Campbell resolved, however, 
that the residency must be evacuated ; and accordingly on the 
19th heavy batteries were opened against the enemy's position, 
as if for the purpose of assault, and under cover of this ope- 
ration the women, the sick, and the wounded were quietly re- 
moved to the Dilkoosha, a small palace in a park about five 
miles from the residency, which had been captured by Sir 
Colin Campbell on his way to attack the city. By midnight 
of the 22nd the whole garrison, without the loss of a single 
man, had left the residency. Two or three days more saw the 
troops established at Alumbagh, some four miles from the resi- 
dency, in another direction from that of the Dilkoosha. 

Alumbagh is an isolated cluster of buildings, with grounds 
and enclosure to the south of Lucknow. The name of this place 



CH. xiii. THE INDIAN MUTINY. 193 

is memorable for ever in the history of the war. It was there 
that Havelock closed his glorious career. He was attacked 
with dysentery, and died on November 24. The Queen created 
him a baronet, or rather affixed that honour to his name on 
the 27th of the same month, not knowing then that the soldier's 
time for struggle and for honour was over. The title was 
transferred to his son, the present Sir Henry Havelock, who 
had fought gallantly under his father's eyes. The fame of 
Havelock's exploits reached England only a little in advance 
of the news of his death. So many brilliant deeds had seldom 
in the history of our wars been crowded into days so few. All 
the fame of that glorious career was the work of some strenuous 
splendid weeks. Havelock's promotion had been slow. He 
had not much for which to thank the favour of his superiors. 
No family influence, no powerful patrons or friends had made 
his slow progress more easy. He was more than sixty when 
the mutiny broke out. He was born in April 1795 ; he was 
educated at the Charterhouse, London, where his grave, stu- 
dious ways procured for him the nickname of ' Old Phlos ' — the 
schoolboy's ' short ' for ' old philosopher.' He went out to 
India in 1823, and served in the Burmese war of 1824, and 
the Sikh war of 1845. He was a man of grave and earnest 
character, a Baptist by religion, and strongly penetrated with 
a conviction that the religious spirit ought to pervade and 
inform all the duties of military as well as civil life. By his 
earnestness and his example he succeeded in animating those 
whom he led with similar feelings ; and ' Havelock's saints ' 
were well known through India by this distinctive appropriate 
title. ' Havelock's saints ' showed, whenever they had an 
opportunity, that they could fight as desperately as the most 
reckless sinners ; and their commander found the fame flung 
in his way, across the path of his duty, which he never would 
have swerved one inch from that path to seek. Amid all the 
excitement of hope and fear, passion and panic, in England, 
there was time for the whole heart of the nation to feel pride 
in Havelock's career and sorrow for his untimely death. Un- 
timely ? Was it after all untimely ? Since when has it not 
been held the crown of a great career that the hero dies at the 
moment of accomplished victory ? 

Sir Colin Campbell left General Outram in charge of 
Alumbagh, and himself hastened towards Cawnpore. A large 
hostile force, composed chiefly of the revolted army of Scindia, 
the ruler of Gwalior, had marched upon Cawnpore. General 

9 



194 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xiii. 

Windham, who held the command there, had gone out to 
attack them. He was compelled to retreat, not without severe 
loss, to his entrenchments at Cawnpore, and the enemy occu- 
pied the city itself. Sir Colin Campbell attacked the rebels at 
one place ; Sir Hope Grant attacked them at another, and 
Cawnpore was retaken. Sir Colin Campbell then turned his 
attention to reconquering the entire city of Lucknow. It was 
not until March 19, 1858, that Lucknow fell completely into 
the hands of the English. Our operations had been almost 
entirely by artillery, and had been conducted with consummate 
prudence as well as boldness, and our loss was therefore very 
small, while the enemy suffered most severely. Among our 
wounded was the gallant leader of the naval brigade, Sir 
William Peel, son of the great statesman. Sir William Peel 
died at Cawnpore shortly after, of small-pox, his death re- 
marked and lamented even amid all the noble deaths of that 
eventful time. One name must not be forgotten among those 
who endured the siege of Lucknow. It is that of Dr. Brydon, 
whom we last saw as he appeared under the walls of Jellalabad, 
the one survivor come back to tell the tale of the disastrous 
retreat from Cabul. 

Practically, the reconquest of Lucknow was the final blow 
in the suppression of the great Bengal mutiny. Some episodes 
of the war, however, were still worthy of notice. For example, 
the rebels seized Gwalior, the capital of the Maharajah Scindia, 
who escaped to Agra. The English had to attack the rebels, 
retake Grwalior, and restore Scindia. The Maharajah Scindia 
of Gwalior had deserved well of the English Government. 
Under every temptation, every threat, and many profound 
perils from the rebellion, he had remained firm to his friend- 
ship. So, too, had Holkar, the Maharajah of the Indore 
territory. The country owes much to those two princes, for 
the part they took at her hour of need ; and she has not, we 
are glad to think, proved herself ungrateful. One of those 
who fought to the last on the rebels' side was the Kanee, or 
Princess, of Jhansi, whose territory, as we have already seen, 
had been one of our annexations. For months after the fall 
of Delhi she contrived to baffle Sir Hugh Eose and the 
English. She led squadrons in the field. She fought with 
her own hand. She was engaged against us in the battle for 
the possession of Gwalior. In the uniform of a cavalry officer 
Bhe led charge after charge, and she was killed among those 
^ho resisted to the last. Her body was found upon the field, 



CH. xih. THE INDIAN MUTINY. 19$ 

scarred with wounds enough in the front to have done credit 
to any hero. Sir Hugh Eose paid her the well-deserved 
tribute which a generous conqueror is always glad to be able 
to offer. He said, in his general order, that '■ the best man 
upon the side of the enemy was the woman found dead, the 
Ranee of Jhansi.' 

It is not necessary to describe, with any minuteness of 
detail, the final spasms of the rebellion. Tantia Topee, the 
lieutenant of Nana Sahib, was taken prisoner in April 1859, 
was tried for his share in the Cawnpore massacre, and was 
hanged like any vulgar criminal. The old King of Delhi was 
also put on trial, and being found guilty, was sentenced to 
transportation. He was sent to the Cape of Good Hope, but 
the colonists there refused to receive him, and this last of the 
line of the Grand Moguls had to go begging for a prison. He 
was finally carried to Rangoon, in British Burmah. On De- 
cember 20, 1858, Lord Clyde, who had been Sir Colin Campbell, 
announced to the Governor- General that the rebellion was at 
an end, and on May 1, 1859, there was a public thanksgiving 
in England for the pacification of India. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE END OP 'JOHN COMPANY 

While these things were passing in India, it is needless to 
say that the public opinion of England was distracted by 
agitation and by opposing counsels. For a long time the 
condition of Indian affairs had been regarded in England 
with something like absolute indifference. In the House of 
Commons a debate on any question connected with India was 
as strictly an affair of experts as a discussion on some local 
gas or water bill. The House in general did not even affect 
to have any interest in it. The officials who had to do with 
Indian affairs ; the men on the Opposition benches who had 
held the same offices while their party was in power ; these, 
and two or three men who had been in India, and were set 
down as crotchety because they professed any concern in its 
mode of government — such were the politicians who carried 
on an Indian debate, and who had the House all to themselves 
while the discussion lasted. The Indian Mutiny startled the 
public feeling of England out of this state of unhealthy 



196 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xiv. 

languor. First came the passion and panic, the cry for blood, 
the wholesale executions, the blowing of rebels from guns ; 
then came a certain degree of reaction, and some eminent 
Englishmen were found to express alarm at the very sanguinary 
methods of repression and of punishment that were in favour 
among most of our fellow-countrymen in India. 

It was during this season of reaction that the famous dis- 
cussions took place on Lord Canning's proclamation. On 
March 3, 1858, the proclamation was issued from Allahabad 
to the chiefs of Oudh, and it announced that, with the excep- 
tion of the lands then held by six loyal proprietors of the 
province, the proprietary right in the whole of the soil of Oudh 
was transferred to the British Government, which would dis- 
pose of it in such manner as might seem fitting. The disposal, 
however, was indicated by the terms of the proclamation. To 
all chiefs and landholders who should at once surrender to the 
Chief Commissioner of Oudh it was promised that their lives 
should be spared, ' provided that their hands are unstained by 
English blood murderously shed ; ' but it was stated that, ' as 
regards any further- indulgence which may be extended to them, 
and the conditions in which they may hereafter be placed, 
they must throw themselves upon the justice and mercy of 
the British Government/ Read by the light of literalness, 
this proclamation unquestionably seemed to amount to an 
absolute confiscation of the whole soil of Oudh ; for even the 
favoured landowners who were to retain their properties were 
given to understand that they retained them by the favour of 
the Crown and as a reward for their loyalty. Sir James 
Outram wrote at once to Lord Canning, pointing out that there 
were not a dozen landholders in Oudh who had not either 
themselves borne arms against us or assisted the rebels with 
men or money, and that, therefore, the effect of the proclama- 
tion would be to confiscate the entire proprietary right in the 
province and to make the chiefs and landlords desperate, and 
that the result would be a ' guerilla war for the extirpation, 
root and branch, of this class of men, which will involve the 
loss of thousands of Europeans by battle, disease, and expo- 
sure.' Lord Canning consented to insert in the proclamation 
a clause announcing that a liberal indulgence would be granted 
to those who should promptly come forward to aid in the 
restoration of order, and that ' the Governor- General will be 
ready to view liberally the claims which they may thus acquire 
to a restitution of their former rights.' 



CH. xiv. THE END OF « JOHN COMPANY.'' 197 

In truth, it was never the intention of Lord Canning to 
put in force any cruel and sweeping policy of confiscation. 
Lord Canning had come to the conclusion that the English 
Government must start afresh in their dealings with Oudh. 
He came to the conclusion that the necessary policy for all 
parties concerned was to make of the mutiny, and the conse- 
quent reorganisation, an opportunity not for a wholesale con- 
fiscation of the land, but for a measure which should declare 
that the land was held under the power and right of the 
English Government. The principle of his policy was some- 
what like that adopted by Lord Durham in Canada. It seized 
the power of a dictator over life and property, that the dictator 
might be able to restore peace and order at the least cost in 
loss and suffering to the province and the population whose 
affairs it was his task to administer. But it may be freely 
admitted that on the face of it the proclamation of Lord 
Canning looked strangely despotic. Some of the most 
independent and liberal Englishmen took this view of it. 
Men who had supported Lord Canning through all the hours 
of clamour against him felt compelled to express disapproval 
of what they understood to be his new policy. It so happened 
that Lord Ellenborough was then President of the Board of 
Control, and Lord Ellenborough was a man who always 
acted on impulse, and had a passion for fine phrases. He 
had a sincere love of justice, according to his lights ; but he 
had a still stronger love for antithesis. Lord Ellenborough 
therefore had no sooner received a copy of Lord Canning's 
proclamation than he despatched upon his own responsibility 
a rattling condemnation of the whole proceeding. The question 
was taken up immediately in both Houses of Parliament. Lord 
Shaftesbury in the House of Lords moved a resolution de- 
claring that the House regarded with regret and serious appre- 
hension the sending of such a despatch, as such a course 
must prejudice our rule in India by weakening the authority 
of the Governor- General and encouraging the resistance of 
rebels still in arms. A similar motion was introduced by Mr. 
Cardwell in the House of Commons. In both Houses the 
arraignment of the Ministry proved a failure. Lord Ellen- 
borough at once took upon himself the whole responsibility 
of an act which was undoubtedly all his own, and he 
resigned his office. The resolution was therefore defeated in 
the House of Lords on a division, and had to be withdrawn 
in a rather ignominious manner in the House of Commons, 



198 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES ch. xiv. 

Lord Canning continued his policy, the policy which he 
had marked out for himself, with signal success. Within a 
few weeks after the capture of Lucknow, almost all the large 
landowners had tendered their allegiance. Lord Canning im- 
pressed upon his officers the duty of making their rule as 
considerate and conciliatory as possible. The new system 
established in Oudh was based upon the principle of recog- 
nising the Talookdars as responsible landholders, while so 
limiting their power by the authority of the Government as to 
get rid of old abuses, and protect the occupiers and cultivators 
of the soil. Canning, like Durham, only lived long enough to 
hear the general acknowledgment that he had done well for 
the country he was sent to govern, and for the country in whose 
name and with whose authority he went forth. 

The rebellion pulled down with it a famous old institution, 
the government of the East India Company. Before the 
mutiny had been entirely crushed, the rule of ' John Company ' 
came to an end. The administration of India had, indeed, 
long ceased to be under the control of the Company as it was 
in the days of Warren Hastings. A Board of Directors, 
nominated partly by the Crown and partly by the Company, 
sat in Leadenhall Street, and gave general directions for the 
government of India. But the Parliamentary department, 
called the Board of Control, had the right of reviewing and 
revising the decisions of the Company. . The Crown had the 
power of nominating the Governor- General, and the Company 
had only the power of recalling him. This odd and perhaps 
unparalleled system of double government had not much to 
defend it on strictly logical grounds ; and the moment a great 
crisis came it was natural that all the blame of difficulty and 
disaster should be laid upon its head. With the beginning 
of the mutiny the impression began to grow up in the public 
mind here that something of a sweeping nature must be done 
for the reorganisation of India ; and before long this vague 
impression crystallised into a conviction that England must 
take Indian administration into her own hands, and that the 
time had come for the fiction of rule by a trading company to 
be absolutely given up. In the beginning of 1858 Lord 
Palmerston introduced a bill to transfer the authority of the 
Company formally and absolutely to the Crown. The plan of 
the scheme was that there were to be a president and a council 
of eight members, to be nominated by the Government. 
There was a large majority in the House of Commons in favour 



CH. xiv. THE END OF < JOHN COMPANY* 199 

of the bill ; but the agitation caused by the attempt to assas- 
sinate the Emperor of the French, and Palmerston's ill-judged 
and ill-timed Conspiracy Bill, led to the sudden overthrow of 
his Government. When Lord Derby succeeded to power, he 
brought in a bill for the better government of India at once ; 
but the measure was a failure. Then Lord John Bussell pro- 
posed that the House should proceed by way of resolutions — 
that is, that the lines of a scheme of legislation should be laid 
down by a series of resolutions in committee of the whole House, 
and that upon those lines the Government should construct 
a measure. The suggestion was eagerly welcomed, and after 
many nights of discussion a basis of legislation was at last 
agreed upon. This bill passed into law in the autumn of 
1858 ; and for the remainder of Lord Derby's tenure of power, 
his son, Lord Stanley, was Secretary of State for India. The bill, 
which was called ' An Act for the better Government of India,' 
provided that all the territories previously under the government 
of the East India Company were to be vested in her Majesty, 
and all the Company's powers to be exercised in her name. 
One of her Majesty's principal Secretaries of State was to 
have all the power previously exercised by the Company, or by 
the Board of Control. The Secretary was to be assisted by a 
Council of India, to consist of fifteen members, of whom 
seven were to be elected by the Court of Directors from their 
own body, and eight nominated by the Crown. The vacancies 
among the nominated were to be filled up by the Crown ; those 
among the elected by the remaining members of the Council 
for a certain time, but afterwards by the Secretary of State for 
India. The competitive principle for the Civil Service was 
extended in its application and made thoroughly practical. 
The military and naval forces of the Company were to be 
deemed the forces of her Majesty. A clause was introduced 
declaring that, except for the purpose of preventing or repelling 
actual invasion of India, the Indian revenues should not 
without the consent of both Houses of Parliament, be appli- 
cable to defray the expenses of any military operation carried 
on beyond the external frontiers of her Majesty's Indian 
possessions. Another clause enacted that whenever an order 
was sent to India directing the commencement of hostilities 
by her Majesty's forces there, the fact should be communicated 
to Parliament within three months, if Parliament were then 
sitting, or if not, within one month after its next meeting. 
The Vicsroy and Governor- General was to be supreme m 



2oo A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xiv. 

India, but was to be assisted by a Council. India now hag 
nine provinces, each under its own civil government, and inde- 
pendent of the others, but all subordinate to the authority 
of the Viceroy. In accordance with this Act the government 
of the Company, the famed ' John Company,' formally ceased 
on September 1, 1858 ; and the Queen was proclaimed through- 
out India in the following November, with Lord Canning for 
her first Viceroy. It was but fitting that the man who had 
borne the strain of that terrible crisis, who had brought our 
Indian Empire safely through it all, and who had had to endure 
so much obloquy and to live down so much calumny, should 
have his name consigned to history as that of the first of the 
line of British Viceroys in India. 



CHAPTEE XV. 

THE CONSPIRACY BILE. 

The last chapter has told us that Lord Palmerston introduced 
a measure to transfer to the Crown the government of India, 
but that unexpected events in the meanwhile compelled him to 
resign office, and called Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli to power. 
These events had nothing to do directly with the general policy 
of Palmerston or Lord Derby. At midday of January 14, 
1858, Lord Palmerston seemed to be as popular and as strong 
as a minister well could be. But on the evening of January 
14, Felice Orsini, an Italian exile, made his memorable 
attempt to assassinate the Emperor of the French. Orsini lost 
himself, and he drew the English Government down at the same 
time. Felice Orsini was well known in England. He was a 
handsome soldierly-looking man, with intensely dark eyes and 
dark beard, whose one great object was to endeavour to rouse 
up the English people to some policy of intervention on behalf 
of Italy against Austria. After a while, however, he found 
out that England would do nothing. The English Liberals, 
with the exception of a very few enthusiasts, were just as much 
opposed to the principle of intervention in the affairs of other 
States as the Conservatives. But Orsini set himself to devise 
some explanation for what was simply the prudent and just 
determination of all the statesmen and leading politicians of the 
country. He found the explanation in the subtle influence of 
the Emperor of the French, and he appears then to have 



CH. XV. THE CONSPIRACY BILL, 201 

allowed the idea to get possession of him that the removal oi 
the Emperor of the French from the scene was an indispensable 
preliminary to any policy having for its object the emancipa- 
tion of Italy from Austrian rule. He brooded on this idea 
until it became a project and a passion. It transformed a 
soldier and a patriot into an assassin. 

On January 14, Orsini and his fellow- conspirators made 
their attempt in the Eue Lepelletier in Paris. As the Emperor 
and Empress of the French were driving up to the door of the 
Opera-house in that street, Orsini and his companions flung at 
and into the carriage three shells or bombs shaped like a pear, 
and filled with detonating powder. The shells exploded, and 
killed and wounded many persons. So minute were the frag- 
ments in which the bombs burst that 516 wounds, great and 
little, were inflicted by the explosion. Ten persons were 
killed, 156 were wounded. It was said at the time that the 
Orsini plot frightened the Emperor of the French into taking 
up the cause of Italy. Historical revelations made at a later 
period show that this is altogether a mistake. We now know 
that at the time of the Congress of Paris Count Cavour had 
virtually arranged with the Emperor the plans of policy which 
were afterwards carried out, and that even before that time 
Cavour was satisfied in his own mind as to the ultimate cer- 
tainty of Louis Napoleon's co-operation. Those who are glad 
to see Italy a nation, may be glad to know that Orsini's bombs 
had nothing to do with her success. Four persons were put 
on trial as participators in the attempt, three of them having 
actually thrown the bombs. Only two, however, were exe- 
cuted, Orsini and Pierri ; the other two were sentenced to penal 
servitude for life. 

In France an outburst of anger followed the attempt in the 
Eue Lepelletier ; but the anger was not so much against Orsini 
as against England. One of the persons charged along with 
Orsini, although he was not tried in Paris, for he could not be 
found there, was a Frenchman, Simon Bernard, who had long 
been living in London. It was certain that many of the 
arrangements for the plot were made in London. The bombs 
were manufactured in Birmingham, and were ordered for Orsini 
"by an Englishman. It was known that Orsini had many friends 
and admirers in this country. The Imperialists in France at 
once assumed that England was a country where assassination 
of foreign sovereigns was encouraged by the population, and 
not discouraged by the laws. The French Minister for Foreign 



202 A SHORT HISTORY OP OUR OWN TIMES, CH. XV. 

Affairs, Count Walewski, wrote a despatch, in which he asked 
whether England considered that hospitality was due to assas- 
sins. The Due de Persigny, then Ambassador of France in 
England, made a very foolish and unfortunate reply to a 
deputation from the Corporation of London, in which he took 
on himself to point out that if the law of England was strong 
enough to put down conspiracies for assassination it ought to 
he put in motion, and if it were not, it ought to be made 
stronger. Addresses of congratulation were poured in upon 
the Emperor from the French army, and many of them were 
full of insulting allusions to England as the sheltering-ground 
of assassination. A semi-official pamphlet, published in 
Paris, and entitled ' The Emperor Napoleon the Third and 
England,' actually went the ridiculous length of describing 
an obscure debating club in a Fleet Street public-house, where 
a few dozen honest fellows smoked their pipes of a night and 
talked hazy politics, as a formidable political institution where 
regicide was nightly preached to fanatical desperadoes. 

Thus we had the public excited on both sides. The feeling 
of anger on this side was intensified by the conviction that 
France was insulting us because she thought England was 
crippled by her troubles in India, and had no power to resent 
an insult. It was while men here were smarting under this 
sense of wrong that Lord Palmerston introduced his famous 
measure for the suppression and punishment of conspiracies 
to murder. The bill was introduced in consequence of the 
despatch of Count Walewski. In that despatch it was sug- 
gested to the English Government that they ought to do 
something to strengthen their law. The words were very 
civil. Nor was the request they contained in itself unreason- 
able. Long afterwards this country had to acknowledge, in 
reply to the demand of the United States, that a nation can- 
not get rid of her responsibility to a foreign people by pleading 
that her municipal legislation does not provide for this or that 
emergency. The natural rejoinder is, ' Then you had better 
make such a law ; you are not to injure us and get off by 
saying your laws allow us to be injured.' But the conditions 
under which the request was made by France had put England 
in the worst possible mood for acceding to it. Ominous ques- 
tions were put to the Government in both Houses of Par- 
ment. In the House of Commons Mr. Koebuck asked whether 
any communications had passed between the Governments of 
England and France with respect to the Alien Act or any 



CH. XV. THE CONSPIRACY BILL. 203 

portion of our criminal code. Lord Palmerston answered by 
mentioning Count Walewski's despatch, which he said should 
be laid before the House. He added a few words about the 
addresses of the French regiments, and pleaded that allow- 
ance should be made for the irritation caused by the attempt 
on the life of the Emperor. He was asked a significant 
question — had the Government sent any answer to Count 
Walewski's despatch ? No, was the reply ; her Majesty' 8 
Government had not answered it ; not yet. 

Two or three days after Lord Palmerston moved for leave 
to bring in the Conspiracy to Murder Bill. The chief object 
of the measure was to make conspiracy to murder a felony 
instead of a mere misdemeanour, as it had been in England, 
and to render it liable to penal servitude for any period vary- 
ing from five years to a whole life. Lord Palmerston made a 
feeble and formal attempt to prove that his bill was introduced 
simply as a measure of needed reform in our criminal legis- 
lation, and without special reference to anything that nad 
happened in France. The law against conspiracy to murder 
was very light in England, he showed, and was very severe in 
Ireland. It was now proposed to make the law the same in 
both countries — that was all. Of course no one was deceived 
by this explanation. The bill itself was as much of a sham 
as the explanation. Such a measure would not have been of 
any account whatever as regarded the offences against which 
it was particularly directed. Lord Palmerston, we may be 
sure, did not put the slightest faith in the efficacy of the piece 
of legislation he had undertaken to recommend to Parliament. 
He was compelled to believe that the Government would have 
to do something ; and he came, after a while, to the conclu- 
sion that the most harmless measure would be the best. Mr. 
Kinglake moved an amendment, formally expressing the sym- 
pathy of the House with the French people, on account of the 
attempt made against the Emperor, but declaring it inexpedient 
to legislate in compliance with the demand made in Count 
Walewski's despatch of January 20, ' until further information 
is before it of the communications of the two Governments 
subsequent to the date of that despatch.' Mr. Disraeli voted 
for the bringing in of the bill, and made a cautious speech, 
in which he showed himself in favour of some sort of legis- 
lation, but did not commit himself to approval of that par- 
ticular measure. The bill was read a first time. Two hundred 
and ninety-nine votes were for it ; only ninety-nine against. 



204 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. XV. 

But before it came on for a second reading public opinion wag 
begiirning to declare ominously against it. The fact tbat the 
Government had not answered the despatch of Count Walewski 
told heavily against them. It was afterwards explained that 
Lord Cowley had been instructed to answer it orally, and 
that Lord Palmerston thought this course the more prudent, 
and the more likely to avoid an increase of irritation between 
the two countries. But public opinion in England was not 
now to be propitiated by counsels of moderation. The idea 
had gone abroad that Lord Palmerston was truckling to the 
Emperor of the French, and that the very right of asylum 
which England had so long afforded to the exiles of all nations, 
was to be sacrificed at the bidding of one who had been glad 
to avail himself of it in his hour of need. 

This idea received support from the arrest of Dr. Simon 
Bernard, a French refugee, who was immediately put on trial 
as an accomplice in Orsini's plot. Bernard was a native of 
the South of France, a surgeon by profession, and had lived a 
long time in England. The arrest of Bernard may have been 
a very proper thing, but it came in with most untimely effect 
upon the Government. It was understood to have been made 
by virtue of information sent over from Paris, and no one 
could have failed to observe that the loosest accusations of 
that kind were always coming from the French capital. 
Many persons were influenced in their belief of Bernard'3 
innocence by the fact, which does assuredly count for some- 
thing, that Orsini himself had almost with his dying breath 
declared that Bernard knew nothing of the intended assassina- 
tion. Not a few made up their minds that he was innocent 
because the French Government accused him of guilt ; and 
still more declared that innocent or guilty he ought not to be 
arrested by English authorities at the bidding of a French 
Emperor. The debate was over and the Conspiracy Bill disposed 
of before the Bernard trial came to an end ; but we may antici- 
pate by a few days, and finish the Bernard story. Bernard was 
tried at the Central Criminal Court under existing law ; he 
was defended by Mr. Edwin James, a well-known criminal 
lawyer, and he was acquitted. The trial was a practical 
illustration of the inutility of such special legislation as that 
which Lord Palmerston attempted to introduce. A new law 
of conspiracy could not have furnished any new evidence 
against Bernard, or persuaded a jury to convict him on such 
evidence as there was. In the prevailing temper of the publiQ 



CH. XV. THE CONSPIRACY BILL, 205 

the evidence should have been very clear indeed to induce an 
ordinary English jury to convict a man like Bernard, and the 
evidence of his knowledge of an intended assassination was 
anything but clear. 

In the midst of the commotion caused by Bernard's arrest, 
Mr. Milner Gibson quietly gave notice of an amendment to 
the second reading of the Conspiracy Bill. The amendment 
proposed to declare that while the House heard with regret 
the allegation that the recent crime has been devised in 
England, and was always ready to assist in remedying any 
proved defects in the criminal law, ' yet it cannot but regret 
that her Majesty's Government, previously to inviting the 
House to amend the law of conspiracy by the second reading 
of this bill at the present time, have not felt it to be their 
duty to make some reply to the important despatch received 
from the French Government, dated Paris, January 20, 1858, 
and which has been laid before Parliament.' It might have 
been seen at once that this was a more serious business for 
the Government than Mr. Kinglake's amendment. In fore- 
casting the result of a motion in the House of Commons much 
depends on the person who brings it forward. Has he a party 
behind him ? If so, then the thing is important. If not, let 
his ability be what it will, his motion is looked on as a mere 
expression of personal opinion, interesting perhaps but with- 
out political consequence. Mr. Kinglake was emphatically a 
man without a party behind him ; Mr. Gibson was emphatically 
a man of party and of practical politics. Mr. Kinglake was a 
brilliant literary man who had proved little better than a 
failure in the House ; Mr. Gibson was a successful member 
of Parliament and nothing else. When the debate on the 
second reading came on it began soon to be seen that the con- 
dition of things was grave for Lord Palmerston. Every hour 
and every speech made it more ominous. Mr. Gladstone 
spoke eloquently against the Government. Mr. Disraeli 
suddenly discovered that he was bound to vote against the 
second reading, although he had voted for the first. The 
Government, he argued, had not yet answered the despatch 
as they might have done in the interval, and as they had not 
vindicated the honour of England, the House of Commons 
could not entrust them with the measure they demanded. 
Lord Palmerston saw that, in homely phrase, the game was 
up. He was greatly annoyed ; he lost his temper, and did 
not even try to conceal the fact that he had lost it. For a 



2o6 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. XV. 

genial and kindly as well as a graceful man, it was singular 
how completely Lord Palmerston always lost his good manners 
when he lost his temper. Under the influence of sudden anger, 
luckily a rare influence with him, he could be actually vulgar. 
Lord Palmerston, in his reply to Mr. Milner Gibson, showed 
a positive spitefulness of tone and temper very unusual in 
him, and especially unbecoming in a losing man. A states- 
man may rise as he will, but he should fall with dignity. 
When the division was taken it appeared that there were 215 
votes for the second reading and 234 against it. The Govern- 
ment, therefore, were left in a minority of 19 ; 146 Conserva- 
tives were in the majority and 84 Liberals. Besides these 
there were such of the Peelite party as Sir James Graham, 
Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Cardwell, and Mr. Sidney Herbert. Lord 
Palmerston at once made up his mind to resign. His resigna- 
tion was accepted. Not quite a year had passed since the 
general elections sent Lord Palmerston into power triumphant 
over the routed Liberals and the prostrate Manchester School. 
Not quite a year, and now, on the motion of one of the lieu- 
tenants of that same party returned to their position again, 
Lord Palmerston is ejected from office. Palmerston once 
talked of having his ' tit-for-tat with John Kussell.' The 
Peace party now had their tit-for-tat with him. 

Lord Palmerston had the satisfaction before he left office 
of being able to announce the capture of Canton. The opera- 
tions against China had been virtually suspended, it will be 
remembered, when the Lidian Mutiny broke out. England had 
now got the co-operation of France. France had a complaint 
of long standing against China on account of the murder of 
some missionaries, for which redress had keen asked in vain. 
There was, therefore, an allied attack made upon Canton, and 
of course the city was easily captured. Commissioner Yeh 
himself was taken prisoner, not until he had been sought for 
and hunted out in most ignominious fashion. He was found 
at last hidden away in some obscure part of a house. He was 
known by his enormous fatness. One of our officers caught 
hold of him ; Yeh tried still to get away. A British seaman 
seized Yeh by his pigtail, twisted the tail several times round 
his hand, and thus made the unfortunate Chinese dignitary a 
helpless and ludicrous prisoner. When it was convenient to 
let loose Yeh's pigtail, he was put on board an English man- 
of-war, and afterwards sent to Calcutta, where he died early 
in the following year. Unless report greatly belied him he 



CH. XV. THE CONSPIRACY BILL. 207 

had been exceptionally cruel, even for a Chinese official. The 
English and French Envoys, Lord Elgin and Baron Gros, 
succeeded in making a treaty with China. By the conditions 
of the treaty, England and France were to have ministers at 
the Chinese Court, on certain special occasions at least, and 
China was to be represented in London and Paris ; there was 
to be toleration of Christianity in China, and a certain freedom 
of access to Chinese rivers for English and French mercantile 
vessels, and to the interior of China for English and French 
subjects. China was to pay the expenses of the war. It was 
further agreed that the term ' barbarian ' was no longer to be 
applied to Europeans in China. There was great congratula- 
tion in England over this treaty, and the prospect it afforded 
of a lasting peace with China. The peace thus procured lasted 
in fact exactly a year. 

The Ministry of Lord Derby, whereof Mr. Disraeli was 
leader of the House of Commons, was not supported by a 
Parliamentary majority, nor could it pretend to great in- 
tellectual and administrative ability. It had in its ranks 
two or three men of statesmanlike capacity, and a number 
of respectable persons possessing abilities about equal to 
those Of any intelligent business man or county magis- 
trate. Mr. Disraeli of course became Chancellor of the 
Exchequer. Lord Stanley undertook the Colonies ; Mr. 
Walpole made a painstaking and conscientious Home Secre- 
tary, as long as he continued to hold the office. Lord 
Malmesbury muddled on with Foreign Affairs somehow; 
Lord Ellenborough's brilliant eccentric light perplexed for a 
brief space the Indian Department. General Peel was 
Secretary for war, and Mr. Henley, President of the Board of 
Trade. Lord Naas, afterwards Lord Mayo, became chief 
Secretary for Ireland, and was then supposed to be nothing 
more than a kindly, sweet-tempered man, of whom his most 
admiring friends would never have ventured to foreshadow 
such a destiny as that he should succeed to the place of a 
Canning and an Elgin, and govern the new India to which so 
many anxious eyes were turned. Sir John Pakington was 
made First Lord of the Admiralty, because a place of some 
kind had to be found for him, and he was as likely to do well at 
the head of the navy as anywhere else. No Conservative 
Government could be supposed to get on without Lord John 
Manners, and luckily there was the Department of Publia 
Works for him. 



2o8 A SHORT WIS TORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xv. 

Lord Stanley was regarded as a statesman of great and 
peculiar promise. The party to which he belonged wera 
inclined to make him an object of especial pride, because he 
seemed to have in a remarkable degree the very qualities 
which most of their leading members were generally accused 
of wanting. Lord Stanley had a calm, meditative intellect. 
He studied politics as one may study a science. He under- 
stood political economy. He had travelled much ; not merely 
making the old-fashioned grand tour, which most of the Tory 
country gentlemen had themselves made, but visiting the 
United States and Canada and the Indies, East and West. 
He was understood to know all about geography and cotton 
and sugar ; and he had come up into politics in a happy age 
when the question of Free Trade was believed to be settled. 
Lord Stanley was strangely unlike his father in intellect and 
temperament. The one man was indeed almost the very 
opposite of the other. Lord Derby was all instinct and 
passion ; Lord Stanley was all method and calculation. Lord 
Derby amused himself in the intervals of political work by 
translating classic epics and odes ; Lord Stanley beguiled an 
interval of leisure by the reading of Blue-books. Lord Derby's 
eloquence when at its worst became fiery nonsense ; Lord 
Stanley's sank occasionally to be nothing better than platitude. 
The extreme of the one was rhapsody, and of the other 
commonplace. Lord Derby was too hot and impulsive to be 
always a sound statesman ; Lord Stanley was too coldly 
methodical to be the statesman of a crisis. Both men were 
to a certain sense superficial and deceptive. Lord Derby's 
eloquence had no great depth in it ; and Lord Stanley's 
wisdom often proved somewhat thin. The career of Lord 
Stanley did not afterwards bear out all the expectations that 
were originally formed of him. He proved to be methodical, 
sensible, conscientious, slow. But at the time when he 
accepted the Indian Secretaryship people on both sides of the 
political contest looked to him as a new and great figure in 
Conservative politics. He was not an orator ; he had nothing 
whatever of the orator in language or in temperament. His 
manner was ineffective ; his delivery was decidedly bad. But 
his words carried weight with them, and even his common- 
places were received by some of his party as the utterances of 
on oracle. There were men among the Conservatives on the 
back benches who secretly hoped that in this wise young man 
was the upcoming statesman who was to deliver the party 



CH. XV. THE CONSPIRACY BILL, 209 

from the thraldom of eccentric genius, and of an eloquence 
which, however brilliantly it fought their battles, seemed to 
them hardly a respectable sort of gift to be employed in the 
service of gentlemanlike Tory principles. 

The superiority of the Opposition in debating power was 
simply overwhelming. In the House of Commons Mr. Disraeli 
was the only first-class debater, with the exception perhaps of 
the new Solicitor-General, Sir Hugh Cairns ; and against him 
were Lord Palmerston, Lord John Eussell, Mr. Gladstone, 
Sir James Graham, Mr. Sidney Herbert, Mr. Cobden, and 
Mr. Bright, everyone of them a first-class debater ; some 
of them great Parliamentary orators ; some, too, with the 
influence that comes from the fact of their having led 
ministries and conducted wars. In no political assembly in 
the world does experience of office and authority tell for more 
than in the House of Commons. To have held office confers 
a certain dignity even on mediocrity. The man who once held 
office, and who sits on the front bench opposite the ministry, 
has a sort of prescriptive right to be heard whenever he stands 
up to address the House, in preference to the most rising and 
brilliant talker who has never yet been a member of an 
administration. Mr. Disraeli well knew that his party held 
office only on sufferance from their opponents. If they 
attempted nothing, they were certain to be censured for in- 
activity ; if they attempted anything, there was the chance of 
their exposing themselves to the combined attack of all the 
sections of the Liberal party. Luckily for them it was not 
easy to bring about such a combination just yet ; but when- 
ever it came, there was foreshown the end of the ministry. 

Lord Derby's Government quietly dropped the unlucky 
Conspiracy Bill. England and France were alike glad to be 
out of the difficulty. There was a short interchange of 
correspondence, in which the French Government explained 
that they really had meant nothing in particular, and it was 
then announced to both Houses of Parliament that the mis- 
understanding was at an end, and that friendship had set in 
again. We have seen already how the India Bill was carried. 
Lord Derby's tenure of office was made remarkable by the 
success of one measure which must have given much personal 
satisfaction to Mr. Disraeli. The son of a Jewish father, the 
descendant of an ancient Jewish race, himself received as a 
child into the Jewish community, Mr. Disraeli had since his 
earliest years of intelligence been & Christian. But he had 



210 A SHORT HISTORY OF OVR OWN TIMES. CH. XV, 

never renounced his sympathies with the race to which he 
belonged, and the faith in which his fathers worshipped. He 
had always stood up for the Jews. He had in some of his 
novels seemingly set about to persuade his readers that all of 
good and great the modern world had seen was due to the 
unceasing intellectual activity of the Jewish race. 

Mr. Disraeli had the good fortune to see the civil eman- 
cipation of the Jews accomplished during the time of his leader- 
ship of the House of Commons. It was a coincidence merely. 
He had always assisted the movement towards that end ; but 
the success did not come from any inspiration of his ; and 
most of his colleagues in power resisted it as long as they 
could. In July 1858 the long political and sectarian struggle 
came to an end when Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild 
was allowed to take his seat in the House of Commons 
as one of the representatives of the City of London. 
We have seen how by steps the Jews made their way into 
municipal office and into the magistracy. At the same time 
persistent efforts were being made to obtain for them the 
right to be elected to the House of Commons. On April 
5, 1830, Mr. Eobert Grant, then a colleague of one of the 
Gumey family in the representation of Norwich, moved for 
leave to bring in a bill to allow British-born Jews to enjoy all 
the rights of the British subject, without having to profess 
the religion of the State. At that time the Jews were unable 
to take the oath of allegiance, inasmuch as it was sworn on 
the Evangelists. Nor could they take the oath of abjuration, 
intended to guard against the return of the Stuarts, because 
that oath contained the words ' on the true faith of a Christian.* 

The debate on Mr. Grant's motion was made memorable by 
the fact that Macaulay delivered then his maiden speech. The 
proposal for the admission of Jews to Parliament was supported 
by Lord John Russell, O'Connell, Brougham, and Mackintosh. 
Its first reading — for it was opposed even on the first reading 
— was carried by a majority of eighteen ; but on the motion for 
the second reading the bill was thrown out by a majority of 
sixty-three, the votes for it being 165 and those against it 
228. In 1833 Mr. Grant introduced his bill again, and this 
time was fortunate enough to pass it through the Commons. 
The Lords rejected it by a majority of fifty. The following 
year told a similar story. The Commons accepted; the 
Lords rejected. Meantime the Jews were being gradually 
relieved froni other restrictions. A clause in Lord Penman's 



CH. XV. THE CONSPIRACY BILL. ill 

Act for amending the laws of evidence allowed all persons to 
be sworn in courts of law in the form which they held most 
binding on their conscience. Lord Lyndhurst succeeded in 
passing a bill for the admission of Jews to corporate offices. 
Jews had, as we have already seen," been admitted to the 
shrievalty and the magistracy in the beginning of Queen 
Victoria's reign. In 1848 the struggle for their admission to 
Parliament was renewed, but the Lords still held out and 
would not pass a bill. Meanwhile influential Jews began to 
offer themselves as candidates for seats in Parliament. Mr. 
Salomons contested Shoreham and Maidstone successively and 
unsuccessfully. In 1847 Baron Lionel Eothschild was elected 
one of the memhers for the City of London. He resigned 
his seat when the House of Lords threw out the Jews' bill, 
and stood again and was again elected. It was not, however, 
until 1850 that the struggle was actually transferred to the 
floor of the House of Commons. In that year Baron 
Eothschild presented himself at the table of the House and 
offered to take the oaths in order that he might be admitted 
to take his seat. For four sessions he had sat as a stranger 
in the House of which he had been duly elected a member by 
the votes of one of the most important English constituencies. 
Now he came boldly up to the table and demanded to be 
sworn. He was sworn on the Old Testament. He took the 
Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy ; but when the Oath of 
Abjuration came he omitted from it the words ' on the true 
faith of a Christian.' He was directed to withdraw, and it 
was decided that he could neither sit nor vote unless he would 
consent to take the oath of abjuration in the fashion pre- 
scribed by the law. 

Baron Eothschild did not contest the matter any further. 
Mr. David Salomons was inclined for a rougher and bolder 
course. He was elected for Greenwich in 1851, and he pre- 
sented himself as Baron Eothschild had done. The same 
thing followed ; he refused to say the words, ' on the true faith 
of a Christian,' and he was directed to withdraw. He did 
withdraw. He sat below the bar. A few evenings after a 
question was put to the Government by a member friendly to 
the admission of the Jews, Sir Benjamin Hall, afterwards Lord 
Llanover : * If Mr. Salomons should take his seat, would the 
Government sue him for the penalties provided by the Act of 
Parliament in order that the question of right might be tried 
by a court of law ? ' Lord John Eussell replied on the part 



212 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. XV. 

of the Government that they did not intend to take any 
proceedings ; in fact, implied that they considered it no affair 
of theirs. Then Sir Benjamin Hall announced that Mr. 
Salomons felt he had no alternative but to take his seat and 
let the question of right be tested in that way. Forthwith, to 
the amazement and horror of steady old constitutional 
members, Mr. Salomons, who had been sitting below the bar, 
calmly got up, walked into the sacred precincts of the House, 
and took his seat amongst the members. A tumultuous scene 
followed. Half the House shouted indignantly to Mr. 
Salomons to ' withdraw, withdraw ; ' the other half called out 
encouragingly to him to keep his place. The perplexity was 
indescribable. What is to be done with a quiet and respect- 
able gentleman who insists that he is a member of Parliament, 
comes and takes his seat in the House and will not withdraw ? 
Mr. Salomons had undoubtedly been elected member for 
Greenwich by a considerable majority. His constituents believed 
him to be their lawful representative, and in fact had obtained 
from him a promise that if elected he would actually take his 
seat. Many members were of opinion, and eminent lawyers 
were among them, that in the strictest and most technical 
view of the law he was entitled to take his seat. Many more 
were convinced that the principle which excluded him was 
stupid and barbarous, and that the course he was at present 
taking was necessary for the purpose of obtaining its im- 
mediate repeal. 

Therefore any idea of expelling Mr. Salomons was out of 
the question. The only thing that could be done was to set 
to work and debate the matter. Lord John Eussell moved a 
resolution to the effect that Mr. Salomons be ordered to with- 
draw. Lord John Eussell, it need hardly be said, was entirely 
in favour of the admission of the Jews, but thought Mr. 
Salomons' course irregular. Mr. Bernal Osborne moved an 
amendment declaring Mr. Salomons entitled to take his seat. A 
series of irregular discussions, varied and enlivened by motions 
for adjournment, took place ; and Mr. Salomons not only voted 
in some of the divisions, but actually made a speech. He 
spoke calmly and well, and was listened to with great attention. 
He explained that in the course he had taken he was acting in 
no spirit of contumacy or presumption, and with no disregard 
for the dignity of the House, but that he had been lawfully 
elected, and that he felt bound to take his seat for the purpose 
pf asserting his Qwn rights and those of his constituents. 



en. xv. THE CONSPIRACY BILL. «3 

He intimated also that he would withdraw if just sufficient 
force were used to make him feel that he was acting under 
coercion. The motion that he be ordered to withdraw was 
carried. The Speaker requested Mr. Salomons to withdraw. 
Mr. Salomons held his place. The Speaker directed the 
Sergeant-at-Arms to remove Mr. Salomons. The Sergeant- 
at-Arms approached Mr. Salomons and touched him on the 
shoulder, and Mr. Salomons then quietly withdrew. The 
farce was over. It was evident to everyone that Mr. Salo- 
mons had virtually gained the victory, and that some- 
thing must soon be done to get the House of Commons and 
the country out of the difficulty. 

But the victory was not technically won for some time 
after. An action was brought against Mr. Salomons, not by 
the Government, in December 1851, to recover penalties for 
his having unlawfully taken his seat. The Court of Exchequer 
decided by three voices to one that the words ' on the true 
faith of a Christian ' must be held in law to constitute a 
specially Christian oath, which could be taken by no one but 
a Christian, and without taking which no one could be a 
Member of Parliament. The legal question then being settled, 
there were renewed efforts made to get rid of the disabilities 
by an Act of Parliament. The House of Commons continued 
to pass Bills to enable Jews to sit in Parliament, and the House 
of Lords continued to throw them out. Lord John Bussell, who 
had taken charge of the measure, introduced his Bill early in 
1858. When it came up to the House of Lords it suffered the 
usual fate. Then Lord Lucan recommended the insertion of a 
clause in the Bill allowing either House to modify the form of 
oath according to its pleasure. Lord John Kussell objected to 
this way of dealing with a great question, but did not feel war- 
ranted in refusing the proposed compromise. A Bill was drawn 
up with the clause suggested, and it was carried through both 
Houses. A Jew, therefore, might be a member of the House 
of Commons, if it chose to receive him, and might be shut out 
of the House of Lords if that House did not think fit to let 
him in. More than that, the House of Commons might change 
its mind at any moment, and by modifying the form of oath 
shut out the Jews again ; or shut out any new Jewish candi- 
dates. Of course such a condition of things as that could not 
endure. An Act passed not long after which consolidated the 
Acts referring to Oaths of Allegiance, Abjuration, and Supre- 
macy, and enabled Jews on all occasions whatever to omit the 



2J4 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xv. 

words ' on the true faith of a Christian.' Thus the Jew wag 
at last placed on a position of political equality with his Christian 
fellow-subjects, and an anomaly and a scandal was removed 
from our legislation. 

About the same time as that which saw Baron Eothschild 
admitted to take his seat in the House of Conimons, the absurd 
property qualification for Members of Parliament was abolished. 
This ridiculous system originally professed to secure that no 
man should be a member of the House of Commons who did 
not own a certain amount of landed property. It had not the 
slightest real force. Fictitious conveyances were issued as a 
matter of course. Anyone who desired a seat in Parliament 
could easily find some friend or patron who would convey to 
him by formal deed the fictitious ownership of landed property 
enough to satisfy the requirements of the law. As usual with 
Parliament, this anomaly was allowed to go on until a sudden 
scandal made its abolition necessary. One luckless person, 
who probably had no position and few friends, was actually 
prosecuted for having made a false declaration as to his 
property qualification. This practically settled the matter, 
iii very one knew that many other members of Parliament 
deserved in point of fact just as well as he the three months' 
imprisonment to which he was sentenced. Mr. Locke King 
introduced a Bill to abolish the property qualification hitherto 
required from the representatives of English and Irish con- 
stituencies, and it became law in a few days. 



CHAPTER XVL 

DISRAELI' S FIRST REFORM ENTERPRISE. 

When Lord Ellenborough abruptly resigned the place of 
President of the Board of Control he was succeeded by Lord 
Stanley, who, as we have seen already, became Secretary of 
State for India under the new system of government. Lord 
Stanley had been Secretary for the Colonies, and in this office 
he was succeeded by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. For some 
time previously Sir Edward Lytton had been taking so marked 
a place in Parliamentary life as to make it evident that when 
his party came into power, he was sure to have a chance oi 
distinguishing himself in office. His political career had 



JH. xvi. DISRAELI'S FIRST REFORM ENTERPRISE. 215 

up to this time been little better than a failure. He started 
in public life as a Kadical and a friend of O'Connell ; he was 
indeed the means of introducing Mr. Disraeli to the leader of 
the Irish party. He began his Parliamentary career before 
the Keform Bill. He was elected for St. Ives in 1831. After 
the passing of the Bill, he represented Lincoln for several 
years. At the general election of 1841 he lost his seat, and 
it was not until July 1852 that he was again returned to 
Parliament. This time he came in as member for the county 
of Herts. In the interval Lytton had succeeded to wealth and 
to landed estates, and he had almost altogether changed his 
political opinions. From a poetic Badical he had become a 
poetic Conservative. It was certain that whatever Lytton 
attempted he would in the end carry to some considerable 
success. His first years in the House of Commons had come 
to nothing. When he lost his seat most people fancied that 
he had accepted defeat, and had turned his back on Parlia- 
mentary life for ever. But Lytton possessed a marvellously 
strong will, and had a faith in himself which almost amounted 
to genius. He seems to have made up his mind that he would 
compel the world to confess him capable of playing the part of 
a politician. He was deaf, and his articulation was so defective 
that most persons who heard him speak in public for the first 
time found themselves unable to understand him. Such 
difficulties would assuredly have scared any ordinary man out of 
the Parliamentary arena for ever. But Lytton seems to have 
determined that he would make a figure in Parliament. He 
set himself to public speaking as coolly as if he were a man, 
like Gladstone or Bright, whom nature had marked out for 
such a competition by her physical gifts. He became a 
decided, and even in a certain sense, a great success. He 
could not strike into a debate actually going on ; his delects 
of hearing shut him off from such a performance ; and no 
man who is not a debater will ever hold a really high position 
in the House of Commons. But he could review a previous 
night's arguments in a speech abounding in splendid phrases 
and brilliant illustrations. He could pass for an orator. He 
actually did pass for an orator. 

Sir Edward Lytton, as Secretary of the Colonies, seemed 
resolved to prove by active and original work that he could be 
a practical colonial statesman as well as a novelist, a play- 
wright, and a Parliamentary orator. He founded the Colony 
of British Columbia. He sent Mr. Gladstone on a mission to 



2i6 A SHOUT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. cil. xv!. 

the Ionian Islands. There had long been dissatisfaction and 
even disturbance in the Ionian Islands. These seven islands 
were constituted a sort of republic or commonwealth by the 
Treaty of Vienna. But they were consigned to the Protec- 
torate of Great Britain, which had the right of maintaining 
garrisons in them. It seems almost a waste of words to say 
that the islanders were not content with British government. 
For good or ill, the Hellenes wherever they are found are sure 
to be filled with an impassioned longing for Hellenic indepen- 
dence. The people of the Ionian Islands were eager to be 
allowed to enter into one system with the kingdom of Greece. 
Their national principles and aspirations, their personal 
vanities, their truly Greek restlessness and craving for 
novelty, all combined to make them impatient of that foreign 
protectorate which was really foreign government. Many 
English public men, however, were merely angry with these 
pestilential Greeks who did not know what was good for them. 
Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton had not been long enough in office 
to have become soaked in the ideas of routine. He thought 
the causes of the complaints and the dissatisfaction were well 
worth looking into. He offered therefore to Mr. Gladstone 
the office of Lord High Commissioner Extraordinary to the 
Ionian Islands, and Mr. Gladstone, who had been for some 
years out of office, acting as an independent supporter of Lord 
Palmerston's Government, accepted the offer and its duties. 
The appointment created much surprise, some anger, and a 
good deal of ridicule here at home. Sir Edward Bulwer 
Lytton had alluded in his despatch to Mr. Gladstone's 
Homeric scholarship, and this was, in the opinion of some 
politicians, an outrage upon all the principles and proprieties 
of routine. This, it was muttered, is what comes of literary 
men in office. A writer of novels is leader of the House of 
Commons, and he has another writer of novels at his side as 
Colonial Secretary, and between them they can think of 
nothing better than to send a man out to the Ionian Islands 
to listen to the trash of Greek demagogues, merely because 
he happens to be fond of reading Homer. 

Mr. Gladstone went out to the Ionian Islands, and arrived 
at Corfu in November of 1858. He called together the 
Senate, and explained that he had not come there to discuss 
the propriety of maintaining the English protectorate, but only 
to inquire into the manner in which the just claims of the Ionian 
Islands might be secured by means of that protectorate. The 



• 



CH. xvi. DISRAELrS FIRST REFORM ENTERPRISE. 217 

population of the islands however persisted in regarding him, 
not as the commissioner of a conservative English Govern- 
ment, but as ' Gladstone the Philhellene.' In vain he repeated 
his assurances that he came to reconcile the islands to the 
protectorate, and not to deliver them from it. The popular 
instinct insisted on regarding him as at least the precursor of 
their union to the kingdom of Greece. The National Assembly 
passed a formal resolution declaring for union with Greece. 
All that Mr. Gladstone's persuasions could do was to induce 
them to appoint a committee, and draw up a memorial to be 
presented in proper form to the protecting powers. In England 
Mr. Gladstone was attacked in an absurd manner. He was 
accused not merely of having encouraged the pretensions of 
the Ionian Islanders, but even talked of as if he, and he alone, 
had been their inspiration. National complacency could 
' hardly push sensible men to greater foolishness than it did 
when it set half England wondering and raging over the im- 
pertinence of a Greek population who preferred union with a 
Greek kingdom to dependence upon an English protectorate. 
There can be no doubt that the people of the islands had under 
England's protectorate admirable means of communication by 
land and sea, splendid harbours, regular lines of steamers, 
excellent roads everywhere, while the people of the kingdom 
of Greece were hardly better off for all these advantages under 
Otho than they might have been under Codrus. But the 
populations of the islands persevered in the belief that they 
understood better what made them happy than anyone else 
could do. They agitated more strenuously than ever for 
annexation to the kingdom of Greece. A few years after 
their wish was granted. The Greeks got rid quietly of their 
heavy German king Otho, and on the advice chiefly of England 
they elected as sovereign a brother of the Princess of Wales, 
the second son of the King of Denmark. Then Lord John 
Russell, on behalf of the English Government, handed over 
the Ionian islands to the kingdom of Greece. 

The year that followed Mr. Gladstone's mission to the 
Ionian islands (1859) was one of storm and stress on the 
European continent. It began with the memorable declara- 
tion of the Emperor of the French to the Austrian Ambassador 
at the Tuileries, that the relations between the two Empires 
were not such as he could desire. In fact Count Cavour had 
had his way. He had prevailed upon Louis Napoleon to expel 
the Austrians from Italy. In the career of Count Cavour our 

10 



218 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xvl 

times have seen perhaps the most remarkable illustration of 
that great Italian statesmanship which has always appeared 
at intervals in the history of Europe. Louis Napoleon was 
simply a weapon in the hands of such a man. When once 
the French Emperor had entered into a compact with him 
there was no escape from it. Cavour did not look like an 
Italian ; at least a typical Italian. He looked more like an 
Englishman. He reminded Englishmen oddly of Dickens's 
Pickwick, with his large forehead, his general look of moony 
good-nature, and his spectacles. That commonplace homely 
exterior concealed unsurpassed force of character, subtlety of 
scheming, and power of will. Cavour had determined that 
France should fight Austria. The war was over, one might 
say, in a moment. Austria had no generals ; the French army 
rushed to success ; and then Louis Napoleon stopped short as 
suddenly as he had begun. He had proclaimed that he 
went to war to set Italy free from the Alps to the sea ; but he 
made peace on the basis of the liberation of Lombardy from 
Austrian rule, and he left Venetia for another day and for 
other arms. He drew back before the very serious danger 
that threatened on the part of the German States, who 
showed ominous indications of a resolve to make the cause of 
Austria their own if France went too far. He held his hand 
from Venetia because of Prussia; seven years later Prussia 
herself gave Venetia to Italy. 

The English Government had made futile attempts to 
prevent the outbreak of war. Meanwhile the Conservative 
Government could not exactly live on the mere reputation 01 
having given good advice abroad to which no one would listen, 
and they determined to try their hand at a Eeform Bill. Mr. 
Disraeli, as leader of the House of Commons, knew that a 
Eeform Bill was one of the certainties of the future, and 
that whenever Lord John Eussell happened to be in power 
again he would return to his first love in politics, a 
Eeform Bill. He knew also that a refusal to have any- 
thing to do with reiorm would always expose the Tories in 
office to a coalition of all the Liberal factions against 
them. Mr. Disraeli had to choose between two dangers. He 
might risk all by refusing reform ; he might risk all by at- 
tempting reiorm. He thought on the whole the wiser course 
would be to endeavour to take possession of the reiorm question 
for himself and his party. The reappearance o± Mr. Bright 
in politics stimulated no doubt this resolve on the part of M& 



CH. xvi. D ISRAELI'S FIRST REFORM ENTERPRISE. 219 

Disraeli. It is not likely that the Prime Minister, Lord 
Derby, took any active interest in the matter. Lord Derby 
had outlived political ambition, or he had had perhaps 
all the political success he cared for. He had station of 
the highest ; he had wealth and influence ; he had fame as 
a great Parliamentary debater. Now that Brougham had 
ceased to take any leading part in debate he had no rival in 
the House of Lords. He was a sincere man without any 
pretence ; and, if he did not himself care about reform, he 
was not likely to put on any appearance of enthusiasm about 
it. Nor did he set much store on continuing in office. He 
would be the same Lord Derby out of office as in. But this 
way of looking at things was by no means suitable to his 
energetic and ambitious lieutenant. Mr. Disraeli had not 
nearly attained the height of his ambition, nor had he by any 
means exhausted his political energies. Mr. Disraeli, there- 
fore, was not a man to view with any satisfaction the conse- 
quences likely to come to the Conservative party from an open 
refusal to take up the cause of reform. At a time too when 
most of the Conservatives, and not a few of the Whigs, 
regarded Mr. Bright as only an eloquent and respectable 
demagogue, Mr. Disraeli had made up his mind that the 
Lancashire orator was a man of genius and foresight, who 
must be taken account of as a genuine political power. Mr. 
Bright had for a long time been withdrawn by ill-health from 
all share in political agitation, or politics of any kind. He 
now returned to public life. He flung himself into a new 
agitation for reform, and he was induced to draw up a Beform 
Bill of his own. It was practically a proposal to establish a 
franchise precisely like that which we have now, ballot and all, 
only that it threw the expenses of the returning officer on the 
county or borough rate, and it introduced a somewhat large 
measure of redistribution of seats. 

Mr. Disraeli knew well enough that the upper and middle 
classes cared very little about a new Beform Bill. But it was 
evident that any political party could appeal to the support of 
the working- classes throughout the country in favour of any 
movement which promised reform. In short, Mr. Disraeli 
knew that reform had to come some time, and he was 
resolved to make his own game if he could. This time, 
however, he was not successful. The difficulties in his 
way were too great. It would have been impossible for 
him to introduce such a Beform Bill as Mr. Bright would 



220 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xvi. 

be likely to accept. His own party would not endure such a 
proposition. Mr. Disraeli's Eeform Bill was a curiosity. It 
offered a variety of little innovations which nobody wanted or 
could have cared about, and it left out of sight altogether the 
one reform which alone gave an excuse for any legislation. 
Lord Grey's Eeform Bill admitted the middle-class to legislation 
but left the working-class out. What was now wanted was a 
measure to let the working-class in. Yet Mr. Disraeli's scheme 
made no more account of the working-class as a whole than if 
they already possessed the vote — every man of them. The 
English working-classes cried out for the franchise, and Mr. 
Disraeli proposed to answer the cry by giving the vote to 
graduates of universities, medical practitioners, and school- 
masters. 

Yet we may judge of the difficulties Mr. Disraeli had to 
deal with by the reception which even this poor little measure 
met with from some of his own colleagues. Mr. Walpole and 
Mr. Henley resigned office rather than have anything to do with 
it. Mr. Henley was a specimen of the class who might have 
been described as fine old English gentlemen. He was shrewd, 
blunt, and honest, given to broad jokes and to a high-flavoured 
old-fashioned school of humour. Mr. Walpole was a man of 
gentle bearing, not by any means a robust politician, nor 
liberally endowed with intellect or eloquence, but pure-minded 
and upright enough to satisfy the most exacting. It did not 
appear to him honourable to support a measure because it had 
been taken up by one's own party, which the party would 
assuredly have denounced and opposed to the uttermost if it 
had been brought forward by the other side. Public opinion 
admired Mr. Walpole, and applauded his decision. Public 
opinion would have pronounced even more strongly in his favour 
had it known that at the time of his making this decision and 
withdrawing from a high official position Mr. Walpole was in 
circumstances which made the possession of a salary of the 
utmost importance to him. Had he even swallowed his scruples 
and held on a little longer, he would have become entitled to 
a pension. He did not appear to have hesitated a moment. 
He was a high-minded gentleman ; he could very well bear to 
be poor ; he could not bear to surrender his self-respect. 

Mr. Disraeli's ingenious Eeform Bill was found out in a 
moment. Someone described its enfranchising clauses as 
1 fancy franchises ; ' Mr. Bright introduced the phrase to 
the House of Commons, and the clauses never recovered the 



CH. xvi. DISRAELrS FIRST REFORM ENTERPRISE. 221 

epithet. It would be useless to go into any of the discussions 
which took place on this extraordinary Bill. It can hardly 
be said to have been considered seriously. It had to be got 
rid of somehow, and therefore Lord John Eussell moved an 
amendment, declaring that no readjustment of the franchise 
would satisfy the House of Commons or the country which did 
not provide for a greater extension of the suffrage in cities and 
boroughs than was contemplated in the Government measure. 
Lord John Eussell' s resolution was carried by 330 votes 
against 291, or a majority of 39. The Government dissolved 
Parliament, and appealed to the country. The elections 
took place during the most critical moments of the war 
between France and Austria. While such news was arriving 
as that of the defeat of Magenta, the defeat of Solferino, the 
entrance of the Emperor of the French and the King of Sar- 
dinia into Milan, it was not likely that domestic news of a 
purely parliamentary interest could occupy all the attention of 
Englishmen. To many the strength of the Austrian military 
system had seemed the great bulwark of Conservatism in 
Europe ; and now that was gone, shrivelled like a straw in 
fire, shattered like a potsherd. In such a condition of things 
the general election passed over hardly noticed. When it was 
over, it was found that the Conservatives had gained indeed, 
but had not gained nearly enough to enable them to hold 
office, unless by the toleration of their rivals. The rivals soon 
made up their minds that they had tolerated them long enough. 
A meeting of the Liberal party was held at Willis's Eooms to 
arrange on some plan of united action. Lord Palmerston 
represented one section of the party, Lord John Eussell 
another. Mr. Sidney Herbert spoke for the Peelites. Not a 
few persons were surprised to find Mr. Bright among the 
speakers. It was well known that he liked Lord Palmerston 
little ; that it could hardly be said he liked the Tories any less. 
But Mr. Bright was for a Eeform Bill, from whomsoever it 
should come ; and he thought, perhaps, that the Liberal 
chiefs had learned a lesson. The party contrived to agree 
upon a principle of action, and a compact was entered into, the 
effect of which was soon made clear at the meeting of the new 
Parliament. A vote of want of confidence was at once moved 
by the Marquis of Hartington, eldest son of the Duke of 
Devonshire, and even then marked out by common report as a 
future leader of the Liberal party. Lord Hartington had sat 
but a short time in the House of Commons, and he did not 



222 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN T1MFS. ch. xvi. 

then, nor for many years afterwards, snow any greater capacity 
for politics than is shown by an ordinary county member. 
Nothing could more effectively illustrate one of the peculiari- 
ties of the English political system than the choice of the 
Marquis of Hartington as the figurehead of this important 
movement against the Tory Government. He was put up to 
move the vote of want of confidence as the heir of the great 
Whig house of Devonshire ; his appearance in the debate would 
have carried just as much significance with it if he had simply 
moved his resolution without an accompanying word. The 
debate that followed was long and bitter. It was enlivened by 
more than even the usual amount of personalities. Mr. Dis- 
raeli and Sir James Graham had a sharp passage of arms, in 
the course of which Sir James Graham used an expression 
that has been often quoted since. He described Mr. Disraeli 
as ' the Eed Indian of debate,' who, ' by the use of the toma- 
hawk, had cut his way to power, and by recurrence to the 
scalping system hopes to prevent the loss of it.' The scalp- 
ing system, however, did not succeed this time. The division, 
when it came on after three nights of discussion, showed a 
majority of 13 in favour of Lord Hartington's motion. 

The Queen invited Lord Granville to form a Ministry; 
Lord Granville was still a young man to be Prime Minister, 
considering how much the habits of Parliamentary life had 
changed since the days of Pitt. He was not much over forty 
years of age. He had filled many ministerial offices, however, 
and had an experience in Parliament which may be said to 
have begun with his majority. After some nine years spent in 
the House of Commons, the death of his father called him in 
1846 to the House of Lords. He made no assumption of 
commanding abilities, nor had he any pretence to the higher 
class of eloquence or statesmanship. But he was a thorough 
man of the world and of Parliament ; he understood English 
ways of feeling and of acting ; he was a clever debater, and 
had the genial art — very useful and very rare in English public 
life — of keeping even antagonists in good humour. The 
Queen had naturally thought, in the first instance, of Lord 
Palmerston and Lord John Eussell ; but she found it ' a very 
invidious and unwelcome task ' to make a choice between the 
two statesmen. Her Majesty, therefore, thought a com- 
promise might be best got at if both could be united under 
the guidance of Lord Granville, the acknowledged leader of the 
Liberal party in the House of Lords. The attempt was not 



CH. xvi. DISRAELIS FIRST REFORM ENTERPRISE. 223 

successful. Lord John Eussell declined to serve under Lord 
Granville, but declared himself perfectly willing to serve under 
Lord Palmerston. This declaration at once put an end to Lord 
Granville's chances, and to the whole difficulty which had been 
anticipated. Lord Granville was not in the slightest degree 
impatient to become Prime Minister, and indeed probably felt 
relieved from a very unwelcome responsibility when he was 
allowed to accept office under the premiership of Lord 
Palmerston. Lord Palmerston was now Prime Minister for 
life. Until his death he held the office with the full approval 
of Conservatives as well as Liberals ; nay, indeed, with much 
warmer approbation from the majority of the Conservatives 
than from many of the Liberals. 

Palmerston formed a strong Ministry. Mr. Gladstone was 
Chancellor of the Exchequer ; Lord John Eussell had the 
office of Foreign Secretary ; Sir G. C. Lewis was Home 
Secretary ; Mr. Sidney Herbert Minister for War. The Duke 
of Newcastle took charge of the Colonies, Mr. Cardwell 
accepted the Irish Secretaryship, and Sir Charles Wood was 
Secretary for India. Lord Palmerston endeavoured to pro- 
pitiate the Manchester Liberals by offering a seat in the 
Government to Mr. Cobden and to Mr. Milner Gibson. Mr. 
Cobden was at the time on his way home from the United 
States. In his absence he had been elected member for Eoch- 
dale ; and in his absence, too, the office of President of the 
Board of Trade in the new Ministry had been put at his dis- 
posal. His friends eagerly awaited his return, and, when the 
steamer bringing him home was near Liverpool, a number of 
them went out to meet him before his landing. They boarded 
the steamer, and astonished him with the news that the Tories 
were out, that the Liberals were in, that he was member for 
Eochdale, and that Lord Palmerston had offered him a place 
in the new Ministry. Cobden took the news which related 
to himself with his usual quiet modesty. He explained 
afterwards that the office put at his disposal was exactly that 
which would have best suited him, and in which he thought 
that he could do some good. He also declared frankly that the 
salary attached to the office would be a consideration of much 
importance to him. At the moment he was a poor man. Yet 
he did not in his own mind hesitate an instant about Lord 
Palmerston' s offer. He disapproved of Palmerston' s foreign 
policy, of his military expenditure, and his love 01 interfering 
in the disputes of the Continent ; and he felt that he could not 



224 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xvi. 

conscientiously accept office under such a leader. He refused 
the offer decisively, and the chief promoter of the repeal of 
the corn laws never held any place in an English Administra- 
tion. Cobden, however, advised his friend, Mr. Milner Gibson, 
to avail himself of Lord Palmerston's offer, and Mr. Gibson, who 
had never stood out before the country in so conspicuous a posi- 
tion as an opponent of Lord Palmerston, acted on the advice. 

Lord Palmerston had not made any tender of office to Mr. 
Bright ; and he wrote to Mr. Bright frankly explaining his 
reasons. Mr. Bright had been speaking out too strongly, 
during his recent reform campaign, to make his presence in the 
Cabinet acceptable to some of the Whig magnates for whom 
seats had to be found. It is curious to notice now the convic- 
tion, which at that time seemed to be universal, that Mr. 
Cobden was a much more moderate reformer than Mr. Bright. 
The impression was altogether wrong. There was, in Mr. 
Bright's nature, a certain element of Conservatism which 
showed itself clearly enough the moment the particular reforms 
which he thought necessary were carried ; Mr. Cobden would 
have gone on advancing in the direction of reform as long as 
he lived. Not much difference, to be sure, was ever to be 
noticed between them in public affairs. But where there was 
any difference, even of speculative opinion, Mr. Cobden went 
further than Mr. Bright along the path of Badicalism. 

The closing days of the year were made memorable by the 
death of Macaulay. He had been raised to the peerage, and 
had had some hopes of being able to take occasional part in 
the stately debates of the House of Lords. But his health 
almost suddenly broke down, and his voice was never heard in 
the Upper Chamber. He died prematurely, having only 
entered on his sixtieth year. Macaulay had had, as he often 
said himself, a singularly happy life, although it was not with- 
out its severe losses and its griefs. His career was one of 
uninterrupted success. His books brought him fame, influence, 
social position, and wealth, all at once. He never made a 
failure. The world only applauded one book more than the 
other, the second speech more than the first. Macaulay the 
essayist, Macaulay the historian, Macaulay the ballad- writer, 
Macaulay the Parliamentary orator, Macaulay the brilliant, in- 
exhaustible talker — he was alike, it might appear, supreme in 
everything he chose to do or to attempt. Macaulay was undoubt- 
edly a great literary man. He was also a man of singularly noble 
character. He appears to have enjoyed advancement, success, 



ch. xvi. DISRAELrS FIRST REFORM ENTERPRISE. 225 

fame, and money only because these enabled him to give pleasure 
and support to the members of his family. He was attached to 
his family, especially to his sisters, with the tenderest affection. 
His real nature seems only to have thoroughly shone out when 
in their society. There he was loving, sportive even to joyous 
frolicsomeness ; a glad schoolboy almost to the very end. He 
was remarkably generous and charitable even to strangers ; 
his hand was almost always open ; but he gave so unostenta- 
tiously that it was not until after his death that half his kindly 
deeds became known. He had a spirit which was absolutely 
above any of the corrupting temptations of money or rank. 
He was very poor at one time, but it did not seem to have 
occurred to him, when he was poor, that money was lacking to 
the dignity of his intellect and his manhood ; or when he was 
rich that money added to it. He had certain defects of temper 
and manner rather than of character. He was apt to by 
overbearing in tone, and to show himself a little too confident 
of his splendid gifts and acquirements : his marvellous memory, 
his varied reading, his overwhelming power of argument. He 
trampled on men's prejudices too heedlessly, was inclined to 
treat ignorance as if it were a crime, and to make duhiess feel 
that it had cause to be ashamed of itself. These defects only 
are worth mentioning as they serve to explain some of the mis- 
conceptions which were formed of Macaulay by many during 
his lifetime, and some of the antagonisms which he uncon- 
sciously created. Absolutely without literary affectation, un- 
depressed by early poverty, unspoiled by later and almost 
unequalled success, he was an independent, quiet, self-relying 
man who, in all his noon of fame, found most happiness in the 
companionship and the sympathy of those he loved, and who, 
from first to last, was loved most tenderly by those who knew 
him best. He was buried in Westminster Abbey in the first 
week of the new year, and there truly took his place among 
his peers. 

CHAPTEE XVII. 

LOED PALMEESTON AGAIN. 

When Lord Palmerston's Ministry came into power a pro- 
found distrust of Louis Napoleon prevailed almost everywhere. 
The fact that he had been recently our ally did not do much 
to diminish this distrust. On the contrary, it helped in a 
10* 



226 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xvii. 

certain sense to increase it. It was to have his revenge for 
Moscow and the Beresina, people said, that he struck at 
Russia; and he made us his mere tools in the enterprise. 
Now he turns upon Austria, to make her atone for other 
wrongs done against the ambition of the Bonapartes ; and he 
has conquered. What next ? Prussia perhaps — or England ? 

The invasion panic sprang up again here in a moment. The 
volunteer forces began to increase in numbers and in ardour. 
Plans of coast fortification and of national defences generally 
were thrust upon Parliament from various quarters. A feverish 
anxiety about the security of the island took possession of 
many minds that were usually tranquil and shrewd enough. 
The venerable Lord Lyndhurst devoted himself to the work of 
inflaming the public spirit of England against Louis Napoleon 
with a vigour of manner and a literary freshness of style well 
worthy of his earlier and best years. Up to this time there 
was no evidence in the public opinion of England of any 
sympathy with Italian independence such as became the 
fashion a year later. The King of Sardinia, Victor Emanuel, 
had visited England not long before, and had been received 
with public addresses and other such demonstrations of 
admiration here and there ; but he had not succeeded in 
securing the general sympathy of the English public. 

The Ministry attempted great things. They undertook a 
complete remodelling of the Customs system, a repeal of the 
paper duties, and a Beform Bill. The news that a commercial 
treaty with France was in preparation broke on the world 
somewhat abruptly in the early days of 1860. The arrange- 
ment was made in a manner to set old formalism everywhere 
shaking its solemn head and holding up its alarmed hands. 
The French treaty was made without any direct assistance 
from professional diplomacy. It was made indeed in despite of 
professional diplomacy. It was the result of private conversa- 
tions and an informal agreement between the Emperor of the 
French and Mr. Cobden. Although Mr. Cobden had never 
held official position of any kind in England, the Emperor 
received him very cordially and entered readily into his ideas 
on the subject of a treaty between England and France, which 
should remove many of the prohibitions and restrictions then 
interfering with a liberal interchange of the productions of the 
two nations. Napoleon the Third was a free-trader, or some- 
thing nearly approaching to it. His cousin, Prince Napoleon, 
was still more advanced and more decided in his views of 



CH. xvil. LORD PALMERSTOtf AGAIN, 227 

political economy. The Emperor was, moreover, a good deal 
under the influence of the distinguished French economist 
Michel Chevalier. Mr. Cobden had the assistance of all the 
influence Mr. Gladstone could bring to bear. It is not likely 
that Lord Palmerston cared much about the French treaty 
project, but at least he did not oppose it. There were many 
difficulties in the way on both sides. The French people 
and the French manufacturing bodies were for the most part 
opposed to the principles of free trade. So were some of 
the most influential politicians of the country. M. Thiers 
was an almost impassioned Protectionist. The Emperor 
of the French had to enter into the engagement by virtue 
of his Imperial will and power, and a strong objection was 
felt in this country just then to any friendly negotiation or 
arrangement whatever with Louis Napoleon. As soon as it 
became known that the treaty was in course of negotiation a 
storm of indignation broke out in this country. Not only the 
Conservative party but a large portion of the Liberals con- 
demned and denounced the proposed agreement, but the 
eloquence of Mr. Gladstone and the strength of the Govern- 
ment prevailed against them all. The effect of the treaty, so 
far as France was concerned, was an engagement virtually to 
remove all prohibitory duties on all the staples of British 
manufacture, and to reduce the duties on English coal and 
coke, bar and pig iron, tools, machinery, yarns, flax, and 
hemp. England, for her part, proposed to sweep away all 
duties on manufactured goods, and to reduce greatly the duties 
on foreign wines. 

Mr. Gladstone not only succeeded in carrying this part 
of his Budget, but he carried, too, as far as the House of 
Commons was concerned, his important measure for the 
abolition of the duty on paper. The stamp duty was originally 
imposed with the object of checking the growth of seditious 
newspapers. It was reduced, increased, reduced again, and 
increased again, until in the early part of the century it stood 
at fourpence on each copy of a newspaper issued. In 1836 it 
was brought down to the penny, represented by a red stamp 
on every paper. There was besides this a considerable duty 
— sixpence, or some such sum — on every advertisement in a 
newspaper. Finally, there was the heavy duty on the paper 
material itself. The consequence was that a newspaper was 
a costly thing. Its possession was the luxury of the rich ; those 
who could afford less had to be content with an occasional read 



223 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xvn. 

of a paper. It was common for a number of persons to club 
together and take in a paper, which they read by turns, the 
general understanding being that he whose turn came last 
remained the owner of the journal. It was considered a fair 
compensation for his late reception of the news that he should 
come into the full proprietorship of the precious newspaper. 
The price of a daily paper then was uniformly sixpence ; and no 
sixpenny paper contained anything like the news, or went to a 
tenth of the daily expense, which is supplied in the one case and 
undertaken in the other by the penny papers of our day. 
Gradually the burthens on journalism and on the reading public 
were reduced. The advertisement duty was abolished ; in 1855 
the stamp duty was abolished ; that is to say, the stamp was 
either removed altogether, or was allowed to stand as postage. 
On the strength of this reform many new and cheap journals 
were started. But it became painfully evident that a news- 
paper could not be sold profitably for a penny while the duty 
on the paper-material remained. A powerful agitation was 
set on foot for its removal, not on behalf of the interests of 
newspaper speculation, but on behalf of the reading public 
and of the education of the people. 

Mr. Gladstone undertook the congenial task of abolishing 
the duty on paper. He was met with strong opposition from 
both sides of the House. The paper manufacturers made it 
at once a question of protection to their own trade. Vested 
interests in the newspaper business itself also opposed Mr. 
Gladstone. The high-priced and well-established journals 
did not by any means relish the idea of cheap and unfettered 
competition. A good many men were induced to sustain the 
cause of the paper-making and journal- selling monopoly. 
The result was that although Mr. Gladstone carried his 
resolutions for the abolition of the excise on paper, he only 
carried them by dwindling majorities. The second reading 
was carried by a majority of 53 ; the third by a majority of 
only 9. The effect of this was to encourage some members 
of the House of Lords to attempt the task of getting rid of 
Mr. Gladstone's proposed reform altogether. An amendment 
to reject the resolutions repealing the tax was proposed by 
Lord Monteagle, and received the support of Lord Derby and 
of Lord Lyndhurst. Lord Lyndhurst was then just entering 
on his eighty-ninth year. His growing infirmities made it 
necessary that a temporary railing should be constructed in 
front of his seat in order that he might lean on it and be 



CH. xvil. LORD PALMERSTON AGAIN. 229 

supported. But although his physical strength thus needed 
support his speech gave no evidence of failing intellect. Even 
his voice could hardly be said to have lost any of its clear, 
light, musical strength. The question which the House of 
Lords had to face was somewhat serious. The Commons had 
repealed a tax ; was it constitutionally in the power of the 
House of Lords to reimpose it ? Was not this, it was asked, 
simply to assert for the House of Lords a taxing power equal 
to that of the Commons ? Was it not to reduce to nothing 
the principle that taxation and representation go together? 
Lord Lyndhurst entered into a long and a very telling argu- 
ment to show that although the peers had abandoned their 
claim to alter a money bill, they had still a right to refuse 
their assent to a repeal of taxation, and that in this par- 
ticular instance they were justified in doing so. The Conserva- 
tive party in the House of Lords can always carry any division, 
and they were resolved to show that they could do some- 
thing. The House of Lords was in an unusually aggressive 
mood. Mr. Disraeli in one of his novels had irreverently 
said of the Lords, that when the peers accomplish a division 
they cackle as if they had laid an egg. On this occasion they 
were determined to have a division. The majority against 
the Government was overwhelming, and the repeal of the 
excise duty on paper was done with for that session. 

Lord Palmerston promptly moved in the House of 
Commons for a committee to ascertain and report on the 
practice of each House with regard to the several descriptions 
of Bills imposing or repealing taxes. After two months the 
committee found by a majority of fourteen a series of re- 
solutions to the effect that the privilege of the House of 
Commons did not extend so far as to make it actually un- 
constitutional for the Lords to reject a Bill for the repeal of a 
tax. Mr. Bright, who was a member of the committee, did 
not assent to this principle. He prepared a draft report of 
his own in which he contended for the very reasonable view, 
that if the Lords might prolong or reimpose a tax by refusing 
their assent to its repeal when that repeal had been voted by the 
House of Commons, the House of Commons could not be said to 
have absolute control over the taxation of the country. The 
truth is, that if the majority of the House of Commons in 
favour of the repeal of the paper duties had been anything 
considerable, the House of Lords would never have ventured 
to interfere. Not a few of the peers felt convinced that the 



230 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xvit. 

majority of the House of Commons would secretly bless them 
for their intervention. Lord Palmerston followed up the 
report of the committee by proposing a series of resolutions to 
reaffirm the position and the claims of the House^ of Commons 
in regard to questions of taxation. Such resolutions were not 
likely to satisfy the more impatient among the Liberals. ^ An 
appeal was made to the people generally to thunder a national 
protest against the House of Lords. But the country did not, 
it must be owned, respond very tumultuously to the invitation. 
Great public meetings were held in London and the large towns 
of the North, and much anger was expressed at the conduct of 
the Lords. Mr. Bright threw his eloquence and his influence 
into the agitation, and Mr. Gladstone expressed himself strongly 
in favour of its object. Yet the country did not become 
greatly excited over the controversy. It did not even enter 
warmly into the question as to the necessity of abolishing 
the House of Lords. One indignant writer insisted that if 
the Lords did not give way the English people would turn 
them out of Westminster Palace, and strew the Thames with 
the wrecks of their painted chamber. Language such as this 
sounded oddly out of tune with the temper of the time. The 
general conviction of the country was undoubtedly that the 
Lords had made a mistake, and that it would certainly be 
necessary to check them if they attempted to repeat it. 
But the feeling also was that there was not the slightest 
chance of such a mistake being repeated. The mere fact 
that so much stir had been made about it was enough to 
secure the country against any chance of its passing into a 
precedent. A course of action which Mr. Gladstone denounced 
as a ' gigantic innovation,' which Lord Palmerston could not 
approve, which the Liberal party generally condemned, and 
which the House of Commons made the occasion of a signifi- 
cantly warning resolution, was not in the least likely to be 
converted by repetition into an established principle and pre- 
cedent. This was the reason why the country took the whole 
matter with comparative indifference. 

The whole controversy has little political importance now. 
Perhaps it is most interesting for the evidence it gave that Mr. 
Gladstone was every day drifting more and more away from 
the opinions, not merely of his old Conservative associates, 
but even of his later Whig colleagues. The position which 
he took up in this dispute was entirely different from that of 
Lord Palmerston. He condemned without reserve or mitiga- 



CH. XVII. LORD PALMERSTON AGAIN. 231 

tion the conduct of the Lords, and lie condemned it on the 
very grounds which made his words most welcome to the 
Radicals. The first decided adhesion of Mr. Gladstone to the 
doctrines of the more advanced Liberals is generally regarded 
as having taken place at a somewhat later period, and in 
relation to a different question. It would seem, however, that 
the earliest intimation of the course Mr. Gladstone was 
thenceforward to tread was his declaration that the constitu- 
tional privileges of the representative assembly would not be 
safe in the hands of the Conservative Opposition. Lord 
Palmerston, on the other hand, certainly suffered some damage 
in the eyes of the extreme Liberals. Still Lord Palmerston's 
resolutions contained in them quite enough to prove to the 
Lords that they had gone a little too far, and that they must 
not attempt anything of the kind again. A story used to be 
told of Lord Palmerston at that time which would not have 
been out of character if it had been true. Some one, it was 
said, pressed him to say what he intended to do about the 
Lords and the reimposition of the paper duties. ' I mean to 
tell them,' was the alleged reply of Lord Palmerston, ' that it 
was a very good joke for once, but they must not give it to us 
again.' This was really the effect of Palmerston's resolutions. 
The Lords took the hint. They did not try it again. Even 
in that year, 1860, Mr. Gladstone was able to carry his reso- 
lution for removing, in accordance with the provisions of the 
French Treaty, so much of the Customs duty on imported 
paper as exceeded the Excise duty on paper made here at 
home. 

Meanwhile the Government had sustained a severe humilia- 
tion in another way. They had had to abandon their Eeform 
Bill. The Bill was a moderate and simple scheme of reform. 
It proposed to lower the county franchise to 10Z., and that of 
the boroughs to 61. ; and to make a considerable redistribution 
of seats. The Bill was brought in on March 1. The second 
reading was moved on March 19. Mr. Disraeli condemned 
the measure then, although he did not propose to offer any 
opposition to it at that stage. He made a long and laboured 
speech, in which he talked of the Bill as ' a measure of a 
mediaeval character, without the inspiration of the feudal 
system or the genius of the Middle Ages.' No one knew 
exactly what this meant ; but it was loudly applauded by 
Mr. Disraeli's followers, and was thought rather fine by som9 
of those who sat on the Ministerial side. Long nights of 



232 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xvii. 

debate more or less languid followed. Mr. Disraeli, with his 
usual sagacity, was merely waiting to see how things would 
go before he committed himself or his party to any decided 
opposition. He began very soon to see that there was no 
occasion for him to take any great trouble in the matter. He 
and his friends had little more to do than to look on and smile 
complacently while the chances of the Bill were being hope- 
lessly undermined by some of the followers of the Government. 
The milder Whigs hated the scheme rather more than the 
Tories did. Lord Palmerston was well known to be personally 
indifferent to its fate. Lord Palmerston was not so foreseeing 
as Mr. Disraeli. The leader of the Opposition knew well 
enough even then that a Eeform Bill of some kind would 
have to be brought in before long. Mr. Disraeli probably fore- 
saw even then that it might be convenient to his own party 
one day to seek for the credit of carrying a Badical Beform 
Bill. He therefore took care not to express any disapproval 
of the principles of reform in the debates that took place on 
the second readmg of Lord John Bussell's Bill. His manner 
was that of one who looks on scornfully at a bungling attempt 
to do some piece of work which he could do much better if he 
had a chance of making the attempt. 

Meanwhile the Bill was drifting and floundering on to 
destruction. If Lord Palmerston had spoken one determined 
word in its favour the Conservatives would not have taken on 
themselves the responsibility of a prolonged resistance, and 
those of the Liberals who secretly detested the measure would 
not have had the courage to stand up against Lord Palmerston. 
Very soon they came to understand, or at least to believe, that 
Lord Palmerston would be rather pleased than . otherwise to 
see the measure brought into contempt. Lord Palmerston 
took practically no part in the debates. He did actually make 
a speech at a late period ; but, as Mr. Disraeli said with ad- 
mirable effect, it was a speech not so much * in support of, as 
about, the Beform Bill.' Sir George Lewis argued for the 
Bill so coldly and sadly that Sir E. B. Lytton brought down 
the laughter and cheers of both sides of the House when he 
described Lewis as having * come to bury Csesar, not to praise 
, him.' The measure was already doomed: it was virtually 
dead and buried. Notice was given of amendment after 
amendment, chiefly or altogether by professing Liberals. The 
practice of obstructing the progress of the Bill by incessant 
speech-making was introduced and made to work with ominoua 



ch. xvii. LORD PALMERS TON AGAIN. 233 

effect. Some of the more boisterous of the Tories began to 
treat the whole thing as a good piece of fun. Once an attempt 
was made to get the House counted out during the progress 
of the debate. It would be a capital means of reducing the 
whole discussion to an absurdity, some members thought, if 
the House could actually be counted out during a debate on 
the Eeform Bill. A Bill to remould the whole political con- 
stitution of the country — and the House of Commons not caring 
enough about the subject to contribute forty listeners, or even 
forty patient watchers, within the precincts of Westminster 
Palace ! When the attempt to count did not succeed in the 
ordinary way, it occurred to the genius of some of the Con- 
servatives that the object might be accomplished by a little 
gentle and not unacceptable violence. A number of stout 
squires therefore got round the door in the lobby, and en- 
deavoured by sheer physical obstruction to prevent zealous 
members from re-entering the House. It will be easily under- 
stood what the temper of the majority was when horse -play 
of this kind could even be attempted. At length it was 
evident that the Bill could not pass ; that the talk which was 
in preparation must smother it. The moment the Bill got 
into committee there would be amendments on every line of 
it, and every member could speak as often as he pleased. The 
session was passing; the financial measures could not be 
postponed or put aside ; the opponents of the Beform Bill, 
open and secret, had the Government at their mercy. On 
Monday, June 11, Lord John Bussell announced that the 
Government had made up their minds to withdraw the Bill. 
Thenceforward it was understood that Lord Palmerston 
would have no more of Beform. There was to be no Beform 
Bill while Lord Palmerston lived. 

The Queen's Speech at the opening of Parliament on 
January 24, 1860, mentioned, among other things, the re- 
newal of disturbances in China. The treaty of Tien-tsin, 
which had been arranged by Lord Elgin and Baron Gros, 
contained a clause providing for the exchange of the ratifi- 
cations at Pekin within a year from the date of the signature, 
which took place in June 1858. Lord Elgin returned to 
England, and his brother, Mr. Frederick Bruce, was appointed 
in March 1859 Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipo- 
tentiary to China. Mr. Bruce was directed to proceed by way 
of the Peiho to Tien-tsin, and thence to Pekin to exchange 
the ratifications of the treaty. Lord Malmesbury, who was 



234 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xvii. 

then Foreign Secretary, pointed out that the Chinese autho 
rities having the strongest objection to the presence of an 
Envoy in Pekin, would probably try to interpose all manner 
of delays and difficulties ; and impressed upon Mr. Bruce 
that he was not to be put off from going to the capital. 
Instructions were sent out from England at the same time to 
Admiral Hope, the Naval Commander-in-Chief in China, to 
provide a sufficient force to accompany Mr. Bruce to the 
mouth of the Peiho. 

The Peiho river flows from the highlands on the west into 
the Gulf of Peeheli, at the north-east corner of the Chinese 
dominions. The capital of the Empire is about one hundred 
miles inland from the mouth of the Peiho. It does not stand 
on that river, which flows past it at some distance westward, 
but it is connected with the river by means of a canal. The 
town of Tien-tsin stands on the Peiho near its junction with 
one of the many rivers that flow into it, and about forty miles 
from the mouth. The entrance to the Peiho was defended by 
the Taku forts. On June 20, 1859, Mr. Bruce and the French 
Envoy reached the mouth of the Peiho with Admiral Hope's 
fleet, some nineteen vessels in all, to escort them. They 
found the forts defended; some negotiations and inter-com- 
munications took place, and a Chinese official from Tien-tsin 
came to Mr. Bruce and endeavoured to obtain some delay or 
compromise. Mr. Bruce became convinced that the condition 
of things predicted by Lord Malmesbury was coming about, 
and that the Chinese authorities were only trying to defeat his 
purpose. He called on Admiral Hope to clear a passage for 
the vessels. When the Admiral brought up his gunboats the 
forts opened fire. The Chinese artillerymen showed unex- 
pected skill and precision. Four of the gunboats were almost 
immediately disabled. All the attacking vessels got aground. 
Admiral Hope attempted to storm the forts. The attempt was 
a complete failure. Admiral Hope himself was wounded ; so 
was the commander of the French vessel which had contributed 
a contingent to the storming party. The attempt to force a 
passage of the river was given up, and the mission to Pekin 
was over for the present. 

It seems only fair to say that the Chinese at the mouth 
of the Peiho cannot be accused of perfidy. They had mounted 
the forts and barricaded the river openly and even ostentatiously. 
The English Admiral knew for days and days that the forta 
were armed, and that the passage of the river was obstructed, 



CH. xvii. LORD PALMERSTON AGAIN, 235 

Some of the English officers who were actually engaged in 
the attempt of Admiral Hope frankly repudiated the idea of 
any treachery on the part of the Chinese, or any surprise on 
their own side. They knew perfectly well, they said, that the 
forts were about to resist the attempt to force a way for the 
Envoys up the river. 

It will be easily imagined that the news created a deep 
sensation in England. People in general made up their minds 
at once that the matter could not be allowed to rest there, and 
that the mission to Pekin must be enforced. At the same 
time a strong feeling prevailed that the Envoy, Mr. Bruce, 
had been imprudent and precipitate in his conduct. For this, 
however, it seems more just to blame Lord Malmesbury than 
Mr. Bruce, who might well have thought that his instructions 
left him no alternative but to force his way. Before the whole 
question came to be discussed in Parliament the Conservatives 
had gone out and the Liberals had come in. 

The English and French Governments determined that the 
men who had made the treaty of Tien-tsin — Lord Elgin and 
Baron Gros — should be sent back to insist on its reinforcement. 
Sir Hope Grant was appointed to the military command of 
our land forces, and General Cousin de Montauban, afterwards 
Count Palikao, commanded the soldiers of France. The 
Chinese, to do them justice, fought very bravely, but of course 
they had no chance whatever against such forces as those 
commanded by the English and French generals. The allies 
captured the Taku forts, occupied Tien-tsin, and marched on 
Pekin. The Chinese Government endeavoured to negotiate 
for peace, and to interpose any manner of delay, diplomatic or 
otherwise, between the allies and their progress to the capital. 
Lord Elgin consented at last to enter into negotiations at 
Tungchow, a walled town ten or twelve miles nearer than 
Pekin. Before the negotiations took place, Lord Elgin's 
secretaries, Mr. Parkes and Mr. Loch, some English officers, 
Mr. Bowlby, the correspondent of the Times, and some 
members of the staff of Baron Gros, were treacherously 
seized by the Chinese while under a flag of truce and dragged 
off to various prisons. Mr. Parkes and Mr. Loch, with eleven 
of their companions, were afterwards released, after having 
been treated with much cruelty and indignity, but thirteen 
of the prisoners died of the horrible ill-treatment they received. 
Lord Elgin refused to negotiate until the prisoners had been 
returned, and the allied armies were actually at one £6 the 



236 A SHORT HJ STORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. XVII. 

great gates of Pekin, and had their guns in position to blow 
the gate in, when the Chinese acceded to their terms. The 
gate was surrendered, the allies entered the city, and the 
English and French flags were hoisted side by side on the 
walls of Pekin. It was only after entering the city that Lord 
Elgin learned of the murder of the captives. He then 
determined that the Summer Palace should be burnt down as a 
means of impressing the mind of the Chinese authorities gene- 
rally with some sense of the danger of treachery and foul play. 
Two days were occupied in the destruction of the palace. It 
covered an area of many miles. Gardens, temples, small 
lodges, and pagodas, groves, grottoes, lakes, bridges, terraces, 
artificial hills, diversified the vast space. All the artistic 
treasures, all the curiosities, archaeological and other, that 
Chinese wealth and Chinese taste, such as it was, could bring 
together, had been accumulated in this magnificent pleasaunce. 
The surrounding scenery was beautiful. The high mountains 
of Tartary ramparted one side of the enclosure. The buildings 
were set on fire ; the whole place was given over to destruc- 
tion. A monument was raised with an inscription in Chinese, 
setting forth that such was the reward of perfidy and cruelty. 
Very different opinions were held in England as to the 
destruction of the Imperial palace. To many it seemed an 
act of unintelligible and unpardonable vandalism. Lord Elgin 
explained, that if he did not demand the surrender of the 
actual perpetrators, it was because he knew full well that no 
difficulty would have been made about giving him a seeming 
satisfaction. The Chinese Government would have selected 
for vicarious punishment, in all probability, a crowd of mean 
and unfortunate wretches who had nothing to do with the 
murders, who perhaps had never heard that such murders 
were done, and who would possibly even go to their death 
without the slightest notion of the reason why they were chosen 
out for such a doom. Most of our actions in the war were 
unjustifiable ; Lord Elgin's was the one for which, perhaps, 
the best case could be made out by a moralist. It is some- 
what singular that so many persons should have been roused 
to indignation by the destruction of a building who took with 
perfect composure the unjust invasion of a country. The allied 
powers now of course had it all their own way. England 
established her right to have an envoy in Pekin, whether 
the Chinese liked it or not. China had to pay a war indemnity, 
and a large sum of money as compensation to the families 



CH. xvti. LORD PALMERSTON AGAIN. 237 

of the murdered prisoners and to those who had suffered 
injuries, and to make an apology for the attack by the garrison 
of the Taku forts. Perhaps the most important gain to Europe 
from the war was the knowledge that Pekin was not by any 
means so large a city as we had all imagined it to be, and that 
it was on the whole rather a crumbling and tumble-down sort 
of place. 

The same year saw also the troubles in the mountain 
terraces of the Lebanon, which likewise led to the combined 
intervention of England and France. The disturbances arose 
out of the rivalries and quarrels between two sects, the 
Maronites, who were Christians, and the Druses, who were 
neither Christians nor Mussulmans. The Turkish com- 
mander disarmed many of the Maronites near Beyrout, and 
seems then to have abandoned them to the Druses, who 
massacred them all. In July the fanatical spirit spread to 
Damascus. A mob of Turkish fanatics made a general attack 
upon the Christian quarter, and burned the greater part of it 
down. The consulates of France, Eussia, Austria, Holland, 
Belgium, and Greece were destroyed. Nearly two thousand 
Christians were massacred in that one day's work. Many of 
the respectable Mussulman inhabitants of Damascus, the 
famous Algerian chief Abd-el-Kader among them, were most 
generous and brave in their attempts to save and shelter the 
unfortunate Christians ; but the Turkish Governor of Damascus, 
although he had a strong military force at his disposal, made 
no serious effort to interfere with the work of massacre ; and, 
as might be expected, his supineness was construed by the mob 
as an official approval of their doings, and they murdered 
with all the more vigour and zest. 

The news of the massacre in the Lebanon naturally created 
a profound sensation in England. England and France took 
strong and decisive steps. They resolved upon instant inter- 
vention to restore tranquillity in the Lebanon. A convention 
was drawn up, to which all the Great Powers of Europe agreed, 
and which Turkey had to accept. By the convention England 
and France were entrusted with the duty of restoring order. 
France undertook to supply the troops required in the first 
instance ; further requirements were to be met as the inter- 
vening Powers might think fit. The intervening Powers 
pledged themselves reciprocally not to seek for any territorial 
advantage or exclusive influence. England sent out Lord 
Dufferin to act as her Commissioner; and Lord Dufferin 



238 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. x*>a. 

accomplished his task with as much spirit as judgment. The 
Turkish Government, to do it justice, had at last shown great 
energy in punishing the authors and the abettors of the mas- 
sacres. The Sultan sent out Fuad Pasha, his Minister for 
Foreign Affairs, to the Lebanon ; and Fuad Pasha showed no 
mercy to the promoters of the disturbances, or even to the 
highly-placed official abettors of them. The governor of 
Damascus and the commander of the Turkish troops suffered 
death for their part in the transactions, and about sixty 
persons were publicly executed in the city, of whom the 
greater number belonged to the Turkish police force. When 
the intervention had succeeded in thoroughly restoring order, 
the representatives of the Great Powers assembled in Con- 
stantinople unanimously agreed that a Christian governor of 
the Lebanon should be appointed in subordination to the 
Sultan ; and the Sultan had, of course, no choice but to agree 
to this proposition. The French troops evacuated Syria in 
June 1861, and thereby much relieved the minds of many 
Englishmen, who had long forgotten all about the domestic 
affairs of the Lebanon in their alarm lest the French Imperial 
troops, having once set foot in Syria, should not easily be 
induced to quit the country again. 

It would hardly be fitting to close the history of this 
eventful year without giving a few lines to record the peaceful 
end of a stormy life. Quietly in his Kensington home passed 
away, in the late autumn of this year, Thomas Cochrane — 
the gallant Dundonald, the hero of the Basque Eoads, the 
volunteer who lent his genius and his courage to the cause of 
Brazil, of Chili, and of Greece ; a sailor of the Elizabethan 
mould. Lord Dundonald had been the victim of cruel, 
although not surely intentional, injustice. He was accused of 
having had a share in the famous stockjobbing frauds of 1814 ; 
he was tried, found guilty, sentenced to fine and imprison- 
ment ; expelled from the House of Commons, dismissed from 
the service which he had helped to make yet more illustrious 
than he found it ; and deprived of all his public honours. He 
lived to see his innocence believed in as well by his enemies 
as by his friends. William IV. reinstated him in his naval 
rank, and Queen Victoria had the congenial task of completing 
the restoration of his well- won honours. It was not, however, 
until many years after his death that the country fully 
acquitted itself of the mere money debt which it owed to 
Lord Dundonald and his family. Cochrane was a Badical in 



ch. xvii. LORD PALMERS TON AG A LIST, 2.39 

politics, and for some years sat as a colleague of Sir Francis 
Burdett in the representation of Westminster. He carried 
on in the House of Commons many a bitter argument with 
Mr. John Wilson Croker, when the latter was Secretary to 
the Admiralty. It cannot be doubted that Cochrane' s political 
views and his strenuous way of asserting them, made him 
many enemies, and that some men were glad of the oppor- 
tunity for revenge which was given by the accusation got up 
against him. His was an impatient spirit, little suited for 
the discipline of parliamentary life. His tongue was often 
bitter, and he was too apt to assume that a political opponent 
must be a person unworthy of respect. Even in his own 
service he was impatient of rebuke. To those under his 
command he was always genial and brotherly ; but to those 
above him he was sometimes wanting in that patient sub- 
mission which is an essential quality of those who would 
learn how to command with most success. Cochrane's true 
place was on his quarter-deck ; his opportunity came in the 
extreme moment of danger. Then his spirit asserted itself. 
His gift was that which wrenches success out of the very 
jaws of failure ; he saw his way most clearly when most 
others began to despair. His later life had been passed in 
retirement. It was his death, on October 30, 1860, which 
recalled to the mind of the living generation the hero whose 
exploits had divided the admiration of their fathers with those 
of Nelson, of Collingwood, and of Sidney Smith. A new 
style of naval warfare has come up since those days, and 
perhaps Cochrane may be regarded as the last of the old 
sea-kings. 

CHAPTEE XVIII. 

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA, 

Civiii war broke out in the United States. Abraham Lincoln's 
election as President, brought about by the party divisions of 
the Southerners among themselves, seemed to the South the 
beginning of a new order of things, in which they and their 
theories of government would no longer predominate. The 
struggle became one for life or death between slavery and the 
principles of modern society. Slavery existed in the Southern 
States, thougli it had ceased long to exist in the North. The 
two systems were really incompatible, but the inevitable 



240 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xviH, 

struggle between the supporters and the opponents of slavery 
might have been indefinitely delayed if the Southern States, 
the Slave States, had not decided to secede from the Union, to 
cut themselves adrift from the abolitionist North, and form 
a slave-holding confederation of their own. 

The Southern States, led by South Carolina, seceded. 
Their delegates assembled at Montgomery, in Alabama, on 
February 4, 1861, to agree upon a constitution. A Southern 
confederation was formed, with Mr. Jefferson Davis as its 
President. Even then war might not have taken place ; the 
North and South might have come to some agreement but for 
the impetuous action of South Carolina. This State had 
been the first to secede, and it was the first to commit an act 
of war. The traveller in South Carolina, as he stands on 
one of the quays of Charleston and looks towards the Atlantic, 
sees the sky line across the harbour broken by a heavy-looking 
solid square fort, which soon became famous in the war. This 
was Fort Sumter, a place built on an artificial island, with 
walls some sixty feet high and eight to twelve feet thick. It 
was in the occupation of the Federal Government, as of course 
were the defences of all the harbours of the Union. It is, 
perhaps, not necessary to say that while each State made 
independently its local laws, the Federal Government and 
Congress had the charge of all business of national interest, 
customs duties, treaties, the army and navy, and the coast 
defences. The excited Secessionists of South Carolina began 
to bombard the fort. The little garrison had no means of 
resistance, and after a harmless bombardment of two days it 
surrendered. The Federal President, Abraham Lincoln, had 
been anxious if possible to enable North and South to come to 
some terms without going to war. After the fall of Sumter, 
however, there was no prospect of any peaceful settlement of 
the quarrel. There was an end to all negotiations ; thence- 
forward only strokes could arbitrate. 

Four days after, President Lincoln called for seventy-five 
thousand men to volunteer in re-establishing the Federal 
authority over the rebel States. President Davis immediately 
announced his intention to issue letters of marque. Pre- 
sident Lincoln declared the Southern ports under blockade. 
On May 8 Lord John Eussell announced in the House of 
Commons, that after consulting the law officers of the Crown 
the Government were of opinion that the Southern Confede- 
racy must be recognised as a belligerent power. On May 18 



CH. Xviii. THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. 241 

the neutrality proclamation was issued by the Government, 
warning all subjects of her Majesty from enlisting, on land or 
Bea, in the service of Federals or Confederates, supplying 
munitions of war, equipping vessels for privateering purposes, 
engaging in transport service, or doing any other act calculated 
to afford assistance to either belligerent. 

At first the feeling of Englishmen was almost unanimously 
in favour of the North. It was thought that the Southern 
States would be allowed quietly to secede, and most English- 
men did not take a great interest in the matter, or when they 
did, were inclined to regard the Southerners as a turbulent and 
troublesome set, who had better be permitted to go off with 
their peculiar institution and keep it all to themselves. When, 
however, it became apparent that the secession must lead 
to war, then many of the same Englishmen began to 
blame the North for making the question any cause of 
disturbance to the world. There was a kind of impatient 
feeling, as if we and the world in general had no right to be 
troubled with these American quarrels, as if it were, unfair to 
us that our cotton trade should be interrupted and we our- 
selves put to inconvenience for a dispute about secession. 
There clearly would have been no war and no disturbance if 
only the North had agreed to let the South go, and therefore 
people on this side of the Atlantic set themselves to find good 
cause for blaming the statesmen who did not give in to any- 
thing rather than disturb the world with their obstinacy and 
their Union. Out of this condition of feeling came the 
resolve to find the North in the wrong ; and out of that 
resolve came with many the discovery that the Northern 
statesmen were all hypocrites. Suddenly, as if to decide 
wavering minds, an event was reported which made hosts of 
admirers for the South in England. The battle of Bull Eun 
took place on July 21, 1861, and the raw levies of the North 
were defeated, thrown into confusion, and in some instances 
driven into ignominious flight. 

This was not very surprising. The Southerners had 
always a taste for soldiering, and had kept up their state 
mih'fcia systems with an energy and exactness which the 
business -men of the North had neither the time nor the in- 
clination to imitate. It was not very surprising if some of 
the hastily-raised Northern regiments of volunteers should 
have proved wretched soldiers, and should have yielded to the 
sudden influence of panic. But when the news reached 
11 



242 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xvm. 

England a very flame of enthusiasm leaped up for the brave 
South, which, though so small in numbers, had contrived with 
such spirit and ease to defeat the * Yankees.' It is important 
for the fair understanding and appreciation of the events that 
followed, to remember that there was, among all the advocates 
of the South in England, a very general conviction that the 
North was sure to be defeated and broken up, and was there- 
fore in no sense a formidable power. It is well also to bear 
in mind that there were only two European States which 
entertained this feeling and allowed it to be everywhere under- 
stood. The Southern scheme found support only in England 
and in France. In all other European countries the sym- 
pathy of people and Government alike went with the North. 
In most places the sympathy arose from a detestation of 
slavery. In Eussia, or at least with the Eussian Govern- 
ment, it arose from a dislike of rebellion. The effect 
was that assurances of friendship came from all civilised 
countries to the Northern States except from England and 
France alone. One of the latest instructions given by Cavour 
on his deathbed in this year was that an assurance should be 
sent to the Federal Government that Italy could give its 
sympathies to no movement which tended to the perpetuation 
of slavery. The Pope, Pius IX., and Cardinal Antonelli 
repeatedly expressed their hopes for the success of the Northern 
cause. On the other hand, the Emperor of the French fully 
believed that the Southern cause was sure to triumph, and 
that the Union would be broken up ; he was even very willing to 
hasten what he assumed to be the unavoidable end. He was 
anxious that England should join with him in some measures 
to facilitate the success of the South by recognising the 
Government of the Southern Confederation. He had after- 
wards reason to curse the day when he reckoned on the 
break-up of the Union, and persuaded himself that there was 
no occasion to take account of the Northern strength. Yet in 
France the people in general were on the side of the 
North. Only the Emperor and his Government were on that 
of the South. In England, on the other hand, the vast 
majority of what are called the influential classes came to be 
heart and soul with the South, and strove to bring or force 
the Government to the same side. 

At first the Northern States counted with absolute con- 
fidence upon the sympathy of England. The one reproach 
Englishmen had always been casting in their face was that 



CH. xviii. THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. 243 

they did not take any steps to put down slavery. It is easy to 
understand, therefore, how Mr. Lincoln and his friends 
counted on the sympathy of the English Government and 
the English people, and how surprised they were when they 
found English statesmen, journalists, preachers, and English 
society generally deriding their misfortunes and apparently 
wishing for the success of their foes. Their surprise changed 
into a feeling of bitter disappointment, and that gave place to 
an angry temper, which exaggerated every symptom of ill-will, 
distorted every fact, and saw wrong even where there only 
existed an honest purpose to do right. 

It was while this temper was beginning to light up on 
both sides of the Atlantic that the unfortunate affair of the 
Trent occurred. The Confederate Government was anxious 
to have a regular envoy in London and another in Paris. Mr. 
Slidell, a prominent Southern lawyer and politician, was to 
represent the South at the Court of the Emperor Napoleon, 
provided he could obtain recognition there ; and Mr. James 
Murray Mason, the author of the Fugitive Slave Law, was to 
be despatched with a similar mission to the Court of Queen 
"Victoria. The two Southern envoys escaped together from 
Charleston, one dark and wet October night, in a small 
steamer, and got to Havana. There they took passage for 
Southampton in the English mail steamer Trent. The 
United States sloop of war, San Jacinto, happened to be 
returning from the African coast about the same time. Her 
commander, Captain Wilkes, was a somewhat hot-tempered 
and indiscreet officer. He learned at Havana that the Con- 
federate agents, with their secretaries, were on their way to 
Europe. He intercepted the Trent. An armed party was 
then sent on board, and the Confederate envoys were seized, 
with their secretaries, and carried as prisoners on board the 
San Jacinto, despite the protest of the captain of the English 
steamer and from under the protection of the English flag. 
The prisoners were first carried to New York, and then con- 
fined in one of the forts in Boston harbour. Now, there 
cannot be the slightest doubt of the illegality of this proceeding 
on the part of Captain Wilkes. Mr. Lincoln at once declared 
that the act of Captain Wilkes could not be sustained. Lord 
Russell demanded the surrender of the prisoners, and on 
January 1, 1862, the Confederate envoys were given up on the 
demand of the British Government, and sailed for Europe. 
Unfortunately, however, a great deal of harm had been done 



244 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xvm. 

in the meantime. Popular clamour in the United States 
had entirely approved of the action of Captain Wilkes. Lord 
Palmerston's Government acted, from the first, as if an 
instant appeal to arms must be necessary. The episode was 
singularly unfortunate in its effect upon the temper of the 
majority in England and America. From that moment there 
was a formidable party in England who detested the North, 
and a formidable party in the North who detested England. 

The cause of peace between nations lost a good friend 
at the close of 1861. The Prince Consort died. The death 
of the Prince, lamentable in every way, was especially to 
be deplored at a time when influential counsels tending 
towards forbearance and peace were much needed in England. 
But it may be said, with literal truth, that when the news of 
the Prince's death was made known, its possible effect on the 
public affairs of England was forgotten or unthought of in the 
regret for the personal loss. Outside the precincts of Windsor 
Castle itself the event was wholly unexpected. Perhaps even 
within the precincts of the Castle there was little expecta- 
tion up to the last that such a calamity was so near. The 
public had only learned a few days before that the Prince was 
unwell. On December 8 the Court Circular mentioned that 
he was confined to his room by a feverish cold. Then it was 
announced that he was * suffering from fever, unattended by 
unfavourable symptoms, but likely, from its symptoms, to 
continue for some time.' This latter announcement appeared 
in the form of a bulletin on Wednesday, December 11. About 
the midnight of Saturday, the 14th, there was some sensation 
and surprise created throughout London by the tolling of the 
great bell of St. Paul's. Not many people even suspected 
the import of the unusual sound. It signified the death of 
the Prince Consort. He died at ten minutes before eleven 
that Saturday night, in the presence of the Queen, the Prince 
of Wales, and the Princesses Alice and Helena. The fever 
had become fierce and wasting on Friday, and from that time 
it was only a descent to death. Congestion of the lungs set 
in, the consequences of exhaustion ; the Prince fell into utter 
weakness, and died conscious but without pain. He knew the 
Queen to the last. His latest look was turned to her. 

The Prince Consort was little more than forty-two years 
of age when he died. He had always seemed to be in good, 
although not perhaps robust, health; and he had led a 
singularly temperate life. No one in the kingdom seemed 



ch. xviii. THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. 245 

less likely to be prematurely cut off ; and his death came on 
the whole country with the shock of an utter surprise. The 
regret was universal ; and the deepest regret was for the wife 
he had loved so dearly, and whom he was condemned so soon 
to leave behind. Every testimony has spoken to the singularly 
tender and sweet affection of the loving home the Queen and 
Prince had made for themselves. A domestic happiness rare 
even among the obscurest was given to them. It is one of 
the necessities of royal position that marriage should be 
seldom the union of hearts. The choice is limited by con- 
siderations which do not affect people in private life. The 
convenience of States has to be taken into account; the 
possible likings and dislikings of peoples whom perhaps the 
bride and bridegroom have never seen, and are never destined 
to see. A marriage among princes is, in nine cases out of 
ten, a marriage of convenience only. Seldom indeed is it 
made, as that of the Queen was,, wholly out of love. Seldom 
is it even in love-matches when the instincts of love are not 
deceived and the affection grows stronger with the days. 
Everyone knew that this had been the strange good fortune 
of the Queen of England. There was something poetic, 
romantic in the sympathy with which so many faithful and 
loving hearts turned to her in her hour of unspeakable 
distress. 

The controversy about the Trent was hardly over when Lorcl 
Russell and Mr. Adams were engaged in the more prolonged 
and far more serious controversy about the Confederate priva- 
teers. Some Confederate cruisers, the Savannah, the Sumter, 
the Nashville, and the Petrel scoured the seas for a while as 
privateers, and did some damage to the shipping of the 
Northern States. These were, however, but small vessels, 
and each had only a short run of it. The first privateer 
which became really formidable to the shipping of the North 
was a vessel called in her earlier history the Oreto, but after- 
wards better known as the Florida. Within three months 
she had captured fifteen vessels. Thirteen of these she burnt, 
and the other two were converted into cruisers by the Con- 
federate Government. The Florida was built in Birkenhead, 
nominally for the use of the Italian Government. She got 
out of the Mersey without detention or difficulty, although 
the American Minister had warned our Government of her 
real purpose. From that time Great Britain became what an 
American writer calls without any exaggeration 'the naval 



246 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xvnt 

base of the Confederacy.' As fast as shipbuilders could work, 
they were preparing in British shipping yards a privateel 
navy for the Confederate Government. Mr. Gladstone said, 
in a speech which was the subject of much comment, thai 
Jefferson Davis had made a navy. The statement was at all 
events not literally correct. The English shipbuilders made 
the navy. Mr. Davis only ordered it and paid for it. Only 
seven Confederate privateers were really formidable to the 
United States, and of these five were built in British dock- 
yards. We are not including in the list any of the actual 
war- vessels, the rams and ironclads, that British energy was 
preparing for the Confederate Government. We are now 
speaking merely of the privateers. 

Of these privateers the most famous by far was the 
Alabama. It was the fortune of this vessel to be the occasion 
of the establishment of a new rule in the law of nations. It 
had nearly been her fortune to bring England and the United 
States into war. The Alabama was built expressly for the 
Confederate service in one of the dockyards of the Mersey. 
She was built by the house of Laird, a firm of the greatest 
reputation in the shipbuilding trade, and whose former head 
was the representative of Birkenhead in the House of Commons. 
While in process of construction she was called the ' 290 ; " 
and it was not until she had put to sea and hoisted the 
Confederate flag, and Captain Semmes, formerly commander 
of the Sumter, had appeared on her deck in full Confederate 
uniform, that she took the name of the Alabama. During 
her career the Alabama captured nearly seventy Northern 
vessels. Her plan was always the same. She hoisted the 
British flag, and thus decoyed her intended victim within her 
reach ; then she displayed the Confederate colours and captured 
her prize. But the Alabama did not do much fighting ; she 
preyed on merchant vessels that could not fight. Only twice, 
so far as we know, did she engage in a fight. The first time 
was with the Hatter as, a small blockading ship whose broad- 
side was so unequal to that of the Alabama that she was sunk 
in a quarter of an hour. The second time was with the 
United States ship of war Kearsarge, whose size and arma- 
ments were about equal to her own. The fight took place off 
the French shore, near Cherbourg, and the career of the 
Alabama was finished in an hour. The Confederate rover was 
utterly shattered, and went down. Captain Semmes was saved 
by an English steam yacht, and brought to England to be 



CH. xviii. THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. 247 

made a hero for a while, and then forgotten. The cruise of 
the Alabama had lasted nearly two years. During this time 
she had contrived to drive American commerce from the seas. 
The United States Government complained that the 
Alabama was practically an English vessel. She was built 
by English builders in an English dockyard ; she was manned 
for the most part by an English crew ; her guns were English ; 
her gunners were English; many of the latter belonged to 
the Royal Naval Eeserve, and were actually receiving pay from 
the English Government ; she sailed under the English flag, 
was welcomed in English harbours, and never was in, or even 
saw, a Confederate port. Mr. Adams called the attention of 
the Government in good time to the fact that the Alabama 
was in course of construction in the dockyard of Messrs. 
Laird, and that she was intended for the Confederate Service. 
Indeed, there never was the slightest doubt on the mind 
of anyone about the business for which the vessel in the 
Birkenhead dockyard was destined. There was no attempt at 
concealment in the matter. Newspaper paragraphs described 
the gradual construction of the Confederate cruiser, as if it 
were a British vessel of war that Messrs. Laird had in hand. 
Whatever technical difficulties might have intervened, it is clear 
that no real doubt on the mind of the Government had any- 
thing to do with the delays that took place. At last, Lord 
Russell asked for the opinion of the Queen's Advocate. Time 
was pressing ; the cruiser was nearly ready for sea. Every- 
thing seemed to be against us. The Queen's Advocate 
happened to be sick at the moment, and there was another 
delay. At last he gave his opinion that the vessel ought to be 
detained. The opinion came just too late. The Alabama had 
got to sea ; her cruise of nearly two years began. She went 
upon her destroying course with the cheers of English sym- 
pathisers and the rapturous tirades of English newspapers 
glorifying her* When Mr. Bright brought on the question in 
the House of Commons, Mr. Laird declared that he would 
rather be known as the builder of a dozen Alabamas, than be 
a man who, like Mr. Bright, had set class against class ; and 
the majority of the House applauded him to the echo. Lord 
Palmerston peremptorily declared that in this country we 
were not in the habit of altering our laws to please a foreign 
State ; a declaration which came with peculiar effect from 
the author of the abortive Conspiracy Bill, got up to propitiate 
ihe Emperor of the French. 



248 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xvitt. 

The building of vessels for the Confederates began to go 
on with more boldness than ever. Two iron rams of the 
most formidable kind were built and about to be launched in 
1863 for the purpose of forcibly opening the Southern ports 
and destroying the blockading vessels. Mr. Adams kept 
urging on Lord Russell, and for a long time in vain, that 
something must be done to stop their departure. Lord 
Russell at first thought the British Government could not 
interfere in any way. Mr. Adams pressed and protested, and 
at length was informed that the matter was ' now under the 
serious consideration of her Majesty's Government.' At last, 
on September 5, Mr. Adams wrote to tell Lord Russell that 
one of the ironclad vessels was on the point of departure from 
this kingdom on its hostile errand against the United States ; 
and added, ' it would be superfluous in me to point out to your 
lordship that this is war.' On September 8 Mr. Adama 
received the following: 'Lord Russell presents his compli- 
ments to Mr. Adams, and has the honour to inform him that 
instructions have been issued which will prevent the departure 
of the two ironclad vessels from Liverpool.' No more 
Confederate war-ships sailed from English ports after this. 
But Lord Russell declined peremptorily to admit that the 
English Government were in any way responsible for 
what had been done by the Confederate cruisers, or that 
England was called on to alter her domestic law to please her 
neighbours. Mr. Adams therefore dropped the matter for the 
time, intimating, however, that it was only put aside for the 
moment. The United States Government had their hands full 
just then, and in any case could afford to wait. The question 
would keep. The British Government were glad to be 
relieved from the discussion and from the necessity of arguing 
the various points with Mr. Adams, and were under the 
pleasing impression that they had heard the last of it. 

In the meantime the war had been going badly for the 
North, and her enemies began to think that her fate was 
sealed. The Emperor Napoleon was working hard to get 
England to join with him in recognising the South. Mr. 
Roebuck had at one time a motion in the House of Commons 
calling on the English Government to make up their minds 
to the recognition ; and Mr. Adams had explained again and 
again that such a step would mean war with the Northern 
States. Mr. Adams was satisfied that the fate of Mr. 
Roebuck's motion would depend on the military events of a 



ch. xviii. THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. 249 

few days. He was right. The motion was never pressed to a 
division ; for during its progress there came at one moment 
the news that General Grant had taken Vicksburg on the 
Mississippi, and that General Meade had defeated the Southern 
General Lee at Gettysburg. That was the turning point of 
the war, although not many saw it even then. The South 
never had a chance after that hour. There was no more said 
in this country about the recognition of the Southern Confede- 
ration, and the Emperor of the French was thenceforward 
free to follow out his plans as far as he could and alone. 

The Emperor Napoleon, however, was for the present 
confident enough and quite content with the success of his 
Mexican expedition. Mexico had been for a long time in. a 
very disorganised state. The Constitutional Government of 
Benito Juarez had come into power, and got into dimculties 
with several foreign states, England among the rest, over the 
claims of foreign creditors, and wrongs committed against 
foreign subjects. Lord Eussell, who had acted with great 
forbearance towards Mexico up to this time, now agreed to 
co-operate with France and Spain in exacting reparation from 
Juarez. But he explained clearly that England would have 
nothing to do with upsetting the Government of Mexico, or 
imposing any European system on the Mexican people. The 
Emperor of the French, however, had already made up his 
mind that he would establish a sort of feudatory monarchy in 
Mexico. He therefore persuaded the Archduke Maximilian, 
brother of the Emperor of Austria, to accept the crown of the 
monarchy he proposed to set up in Mexico. The Archduke 
was a man of pure and noble character, but evidently wanting 
in strength of mind, and he agreed after some hesitation to 
accept the offer. At last the designs of the French Government 
became evident to the English and Spanish Plenipotentiaries, 
and England and Spain withdrew from the Convention. 
The Emperor of the French overran a certain portion of 
Mexico with his troops, he occupied the capital, and he set up 
the Mexican Empire with Maximilian as Emperor. French 
troops remained to protect the new Empire. Against all this 
the United States Government protested from time to time. 
They disclaimed any intention to prevent the Mexican people 
from establishing an empire if they thought fit ; but they 
pointed out that grave inconveniences must arise if a foreign 
Power like France persisted in occupying with her troops any 
part of the American continent. However, the Emperor 
11* 



250 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xviii. 

Napoleon, complacently satisfied that the United States wera 
going to pieces, and that the Southern Confederacy would be 
his friend and ally, received the protests of the American 
Government with unveiled indifference. At last the tide in 
American affairs turned. The Confederacy crumbled away — ■ 
Richmond was taken ; Lee surrendered ; Jefferson Davis was a 
prisoner. Then the United States returned to the Mexican 
Question, and the American Government informed Louis 
Napoleon that it would be inconvenient, gravely inconvenient, 
if he were not to withdraw his soldiers from Mexico. A 
significant movement of American troops, under a renowned 
General, then flushed with success, was made in the direction 
of the Mexican frontier. There was nothing for Louis Napoleon 
but to withdraw. Up to the last he had been rocked in the 
vainest hopes. Long after the end had become patent to 
every other eye, he assured an English member of Parliament 
that he looked upon the Mexican Empire as the greatest creation 
of his reign. 

The Mexican Empire lasted two months and a week after 
the last of the French troops had been withdrawn. Maximilian 
endeavoured to raise an army of his own, and to defend himself 
against the daily increasing strength of Juarez. He showed 
all the courage which might have been expected from his race, 
and from his own previous history. But in an evil hour for 
himself, and yielding, it is stated, to the persuasion of a French 
officer, he had issued a decree that all who resisted his authority 
in arms should be shot. By virtue of this monstrous ordinance, 
Mexican officers of the regular army, taken prisoners while 
resisting, as they were bound to do, the invasion of a European 
prince, were shot like brigands. The Mexican general, Ortega, 
was one of those thus shamefully done to death. When Juarez 
conquered, and Maximilian, in his turn, was made a prisoner, 
he was tried by court-martial, condemned, and shot. His death 
created a profound sensation in Europe. He had in all his 
previous career won respect everywhere, and even in the Mexican 
scheme he was universally regarded as a noble victim who had 
been deluded to his doom. The conduct of Juarez in thus 
having him put to death raised a cry of horror from all Europe ; 
but it must be allowed that, by the fatal decree which he had 
issued, the unfortunate Maximilian had left himself liable to a 
stern retaliation. There was cold truth in the remark made 
at the time, that if he had been only General and not Arch- 
duke Maximilian his fate would not have aroused so muclj 
iurprise or anger. 



ch. xviii. THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. 251 

We need not follow any further the history of the American 
Civil War. The restoration of the Union, the assassination of 
President Lincoln, and the emancipation of the coloured race 
from all the disqualifications, as well as all the bondage, of the 
slave system belong to American and not to English history, 
But the Alabama dispute led to consequences which are 
especially important to England, and which shall be described 
in their due time. 



CHAPTEE XIX. 

THE LAST OP LORD PALMERSTON. 

During the later months of his life the Prince Consort had 
been busy in preparing for another great International Ex- 
hibition to be held in London. It was arranged that this 
Exhibition should open on May 1, 1862 ; and although the 
sudden death of the Prince Consort greatly interfered with the 
prospects of the undertaking, it was not thought right that 
there should be any postponement of the opening. The Ex- 
hibition building was erected in South Kensington, according 
to a design by Captain Fowke. It certainly was not a beauti- 
ful structure. It was a huge and solid erection of brick, with 
two enormous domes, each in shape strikingly like the famous 
crinoline petticoat of the period. The Fine Arts department 
of the Exhibition was a splendid collection of pictures and 
statues. The display of products of all kinds from the Colonies 
was rich, and was a novelty, for the colonists contributed little 
indeed to the Exhibition of 1851, and the intervening eleven 
years had been a period of immense colonial advance. But no 
one felt any longer any of the hopes which floated dreamily 
and gracefully round the scheme of 1851. There was no talk 
or thought of a reign of peace any more. The Civil War was 
raging in America. The Continent of Europe was trembling 
all over with the spasms of war just done, and the premonitory 
symptoms of war to come. The Exhibition of 1862 had to 
rely upon its intrinsic merits, like any ordinary show or any 
public market. Poetry and prophecy had nothing to say to it. 
England was left for some time to an almost absolute inac- 
tivity. Between Palmerston and the Badical party in England 
there was a growing coldness. He had not only thrown over 
Beform himself, but he had apparently induced most of his 
colleagues to accept the understanding that nothing more was 



252 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xix. 

to be said about it. He had gone in for a policy of large ex- 
penditure for the purpose of securing the country against the 
possibilities of French invasion. He had spoken of the com- 
mercial treaty with France as if it were a thing rather ridiculous 
than otherwise. He was unsparing whenever he had a chance 
in his ridicule of the ballot. He had very little sympathy with 
the grievances of the Nonconformists, some of them even then 
real and substantial enough. He took no manner of interest in 
anything proposed for the political benefit of Ireland. He 
was indeed impatient of all * views ; ' and he regarded what is 
called philosophic statesmanship with absolute contempt. 
The truth is that Palmerston ceased to be a statesman the 
moment he came to deal with domestic interests. When 
actually in the Home Office, and compelled to turn his attention 
to the business of that department, he proved a very efficient 
administrator, because of his shrewdness and his energy. But 
as a rule he had not much to do with English political affairs, 
and he knew little or nothing of them. He was even childishly 
ignorant of many things which any ordinary public man is sup- 
posed to know. He was at home in foreign — that is, in Con- 
tinental politics ; for he had hardly any knowledge of American 
affairs, and almost up to the moment of the fall of Eichmond 
was confident that the Union never could be restored, and 
that separation was the easy and natural way of settling all 
the dispute. When he read anything except despatches he 
read scientific treatises, for he had a keen interest in some 
branches of science ; but he cared little for modern English 
literature. The world in which he delighted to mingle talked 
of Continental politics generally, and a great knowledge of 
English domestic affairs would have been thrown away there. 
Naturally, therefore, when Lord Palmerston had nothing par- 
ticular to do in foreign affairs, and had to turn his attention to 
England, he relished the idea of fortifying her against foreign 
foes. Lord Palmerston acted sincerely on his opinion, that 
1 man is a fighting and quarrelling animal, ' and he could see no 
better business for English statesmanship than to keep this 
country always in a condition to resist a possible attack from 
somebody. He differed almost radically on this point from two 
at least of his more important colleagues, Mr. Gladstone and 
Sir George Cornewall Lewis. 

Lord Palmerston' s taste for foreign affairs had now ample 
means of gratification. England had some small troubles of 
her own to deal with. A serious insurrection sprang up in 



ch. xix. THE LAST OF LORD PALMERSTON. 253 

New Zealand. The tribe of the Waikatos, living near Auckland, 
in the Northern Island, began a movement against the colonists, 
and this became before long a general rebellion of the Maori 
natives. The Maoris are a remarkably intelligent race, and are 
BMlfal in war as well as in peace. They had a certain literary 
art among them ; they could all, or nearly all, read and write ; 
many of them were eloquent and could display considerable 
diplomatic skill. They fought so well in this instance that the 
British troops actually suffered a somewhat serious repulse in 
endeavouring to take one of the Maori palisado-fortified villages. 
In the end, however, the Maoris were of course defeated. 
The quarrel was a survival of a long-standing dispute between 
the colonists and the natives about land. It was, in fact, the 
old story : the colonists eager to increase their stock of land, 
and the natives jealous to guard their quickly vanishing 
possession. The events led to grave discussion in Parliament. 
The Legislature of New Zealand passed enactments, confiscat- 
ing some nine million acres of the native lands, and giving the 
Colonial Government something like absolute and arbitrary 
power of arrest and imprisonment. The Government at home 
proposed to help the colonists by a guarantee to raise a loan of 
one million to cover the expenses of the war, or the colonial 
share of them, and this proposal was keenly discussed in the 
House of Commons. The Government passed their Guarantee 
Bill, not without many a protest from both sides of the House 
that colonists who readily engaged in quarrels with natives 
must some time or other be prepared to bear the expenses 
entailed by their own policy. 

Trouble, too, arose on the Gold Coast of Africa. Some 
slaves of the King of Ashantee had taken refuge in British 
territory ; the Governor of Cape Coast Colony would not give 
them up ; and in the spring of 1863 the King made threatening 
demonstrations, and approached within forty miles of our 
frontier. The Governor, assuming that the settlement was 
about to be invaded by the Ashantees, took it upon him to 
anticipate the movement by sending an expedition into the 
territory of the King. The season was badly chosen ; the 
climate was pestilential ; even the black troops from the West 
Indies could not endure it, and began to die like flies. The ill- 
advised undertaking had to be given up ; and the Government 
at home only escaped a vote of censure by a narrow majority 
of seven. Much discussion, also, was aroused by occurrences 
in Japan. A British subject, Mr. Bichardson, was murdered 



254 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xix. 

in the English settlement of Japan and on an open road made 
free to Englishmen by treaty. This was in September 1862. 
The murder was committed by some of the followers of Prince 
Satsuma, one of the powerful feudal princes, who then practi- 
cally divided the authority of Japan with the regular Govern- 
ment. Separation was demanded both from the Japanese 
Government and from Prince Satsuma ; the Government paid 
the sum demanded of them, 100,000Z., and made an apology. 
Prince Satsuma was called on to pay 25,000Z., and to see that 
the murderers were brought to punishment. Satsuma did 
nothing, and in 1863 Colonel Neale, the English Charge 
& Affaires in Japan, sent Admiral Kuper with the English fleet 
to Kagosima, Satsuma's capital, to demand satisfaction. The 
Kagosima forts opened fire on him, and he then bombarded 
the town and laid the greater portion of it in ashes. Fortu- 
nately the non-combatant inhabitants, the women and children, 
had had time to get out of Kagosima, and the destruction of life 
was not great. The whole transaction was severely condemned 
by many Englishmen, but the House of Commons, however, 
sustained the Government by a large majority. The Govern- 
ment, it should be said, did not profess to justify the destruction 
of Kagosima. Their case was that Admiral Kuper had to do 
something ; that there was nothing he could very well do when 
he had been fired upon but to bombard the town ; and that the 
burning of the town was an accident of the conflict for which 
neither he nor they could be held responsible. Satsuma finally 
submitted and paid the money, and promised justice. But there 
were more murders and more bombardings yet before we came 
to anything like an abiding settlement with Japan ; and Japan 
itself was not far off a revolution, the most sudden, organic, 
and to all appearance complete that has ever yet been seen in 
the history of nations. 

In the meantime, however, our Government became in- 
volved in liabilities more perilous than any disputes in eastern 
or southern islands could bring on them. An insurrection of 
a very serious kind broke out in Poland. It was provoked by the 
attempt of the Eussian Government to choke off the patriotic 
movement which was going on in Poland by pressing into the 
military ranks all the young men in the cities who could by any 
possibility be supposed to have any sympathy with it. The 
young men who could escape fled to the woods, and there formed 
themselves into armed bands, which gave the Eussians great 
trouble. The rebels could disperse and come together with 



CH. xix. THE LAST OF LORD PALMERSTON. 2$$ 

such ease and rapidity that it was very difficult indeed to get 
any real advantage over them. The frontier of Austrian-Poland 
was very near, and the insurgents could cross it, escape from 
theEussian troops, andrecross it when they pleased to resume 
their harassing operations. Austria was not by any means 
so unfriendly to the Polish patriots as both Kussia and Prussia 
were. Austria had come unwillingly into the scheme for the 
partition of Poland, and had got little profit by it ; and it was 
well understood that if the other Powers concerned could see 
their way to the restoration of Polish nationality, Austria, for 
her part, would make no objection. Prussia was still very 
much under the dominion of Kussia, and was prevailed upon 
or coerced to execute an odious convention with Eussia, by 
virtue of which the Eussian troops were allowed to follow 
Polish insurgents into Prussian territory. 

It was plain from the first that the Poles could not under 
the most favourable circumstances hold out long against Eussia 
by virtue of their own strength . The idea of the Poles was to keep 
the insurrection up, by any means and at any risk, until some 
of the great European Powers should be induced to interfere. 
Despite the lesson of subsequent events, the Poles were well 
justified in their political calculations. Their hopes were at one 
time on the very eve of being realised. The Emperor Napoleon 
was eager to move to their aid, and Lord Eussell was hardly 
less eager. The Polish cause was very popular in England. 
Eussia was hated ; Prussia was now hated even more. There 
was no question of party feeling about the sympathy with 
Poland. There were about as many Conservatives as Eadicals 
who were ready to favour the idea of some effort being made in 
her behalf. Lord Ellenborough spoke up for Poland in the 
House of Lords with poetic and impassioned eloquence. Lord 
Shaftesbury from the opposite benches denounced the conduct 
of Eussia. The Irish Catholic was as ardent for Polish liberty 
as the London artisan. Among its most conspicuous and ener- 
getic advocates in England were Mr. Pope Hennessy, a Catholic 
and Irish member of Parliament ; and Mr. Edmond Beales, the 
leader of a great Eadical organisation in London. Great public 
meetings were held, at which Eussia was denounced and Poland 
advocated, not merely by popular orators, but by men of high 
rank and grave responsibility. War was not openly called for 
at those meetings, or in the House of Commons ; but it was 
urged that England, as one of the Powers which had signed the 
Treaty of Vienna, should join with other States in summoning 



256 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. XIX. 

Eussia to recognise the rights, such as they were, which had 
been secured to Poland by virtue of that treaty. In France 
the greatest enthusiasm prevailed for the cause of Poland. 
The Emperor Napoleon was ready for intervention if he could 
get England to join him. LordEussell went so far as to draw 
up and despatch to Eussia, in concert with France and Austria, 
a note on the subject of Poland. It urged on the attention of 
the Eussian Government six points, as the outline of a system 
of pacification for Poland. These were : — a complete amnesty ; 
a national representation ; a distinct national administration 
of Poles for the kingdom of Poland ; full liberty of conscience, 
with the repeal of all the restrictions imposed on Catholic 
worship ; the recognition of the Polish language as official ; 
the establishment of a regular system of recruiting. There was 
an almost universal impression at one moment that in the 
event of Eussia decHning to accept these recommendations, 
England, Austria, and France would make war to compel her. 
It soon became known, however, that there was to be no 
intervention. Lord Palmerston put a stop to the whole idea. 
It was not that he sympathised with Eussia. But Lord 
Palmerston had by this time grown into a profound distrust 
of the Emperor Napoleon. He was convinced that the 
Emperor was stirring in the matter chiefly with the hope of 
getting an opportunity of establishing himself in the Ehine 
provinces of Prussia, on the pretext of compelling Prussia to 
remain neutral in the struggle, or of punishing her if she 
took the side of Eussia. Lord Palmerston would have nothing 
to do with a proposal of the Emperor for an identical note to 
be addressed to Prussia on the subject of the convention with 
Eussia. After a while it became known that England had 
decided not to join in any project for armed intervention ; and 
from that moment Eussia became merely contemptuous. The 
Emperor of the French would not and could not take action 
single-handed ; and Prince G-ortschakoff politely told Lord 
Eussell that England had really better mind her own business 
and not encourage movements in Poland which were simply 
the work of * cosmopolitan revolution.' After this Austria 
did not allow her frontier line to be made any longer a 
basis of operations against Eussia. The insurrection was 
flung wholly on its own resources. It was kept up gallantly 
and desperately for a time, but the end was certain. The 
Eussians carried out their measures of pacification with an 
unflinching hand. Floggings, and shootings, and hangings 



CH. xix. THE LAST OF LORD PALME RSTON. 257 

of women as well as of men were in full vigour. Droves 
of prisoners were sent to Siberia. Poland was crushed. 
The intervention of England had only harmed Poland. It 
had been carried just far enough to irritate the oppressor and 
not far enough to be of the slightest benefit to the oppressed. 

The effect of the policy pursued by England in this case 
was to bring about a certain coldness between the Emperor 
Napoleon and the English Government. This fact was made 
apparent some little time after when the dispute between 
Denmark and the Germanic Confederation came up hi relation 
to the Schleswig-Holstein succession. Schleswig, Holstein, 
and Lauenburg were Duchies attached to Denmark. Holstein 
and Lauenburg were purely German in nationality, and a large 
proportion of the population of Schleswig, much the larger 
proportion in the southern districts, were German. There 
can be no doubt that the heart of the German people was 
deeply interested in the condition of the Schleswigers and 
Holsteiners. It was only natural that a great people should 
have been unwilling to see so many of their countrymen, on 
the very edge of Germany itself, kept under the rule of the 
Danish King. In truth the claims of Germany and Denmark 
were irreconcilable. Put into plain words the dispute was 
between Denmark, which wanted to make the Duchies Danish, 
and Germany, which wanted to have them German. 

The affairs of Prussia were now in the hands of a strong 
man, one of the strongest men modern times have known. 
Daring, unscrupulous, and crafty as Cavour, Bismarck was 
even already able to wield a power which had never been 
within Cavour's reach. The public intelligence of Europe 
had not yet recognised the marvellous combination of qualities 
which was destined to make their owner famous, and to prove 
a dissolving force in the settled systems of Germany, and 
indeed of the whole European continent. As yet the general 
opinion of the world set down Herr von Bismarck as simply a 
fanatical reactionary, a combination of bully and buffoon. 
The Schleswig-Holstein Question became, however, a 
very serious one for Denmark when it was taken up by 
Bismarck. From first to last the mind of Bismarck was 
evidently made up that the Duchies should be annexed to 
Prussia. War became certain. Austria and Prussia entered 
into joint agreements for the purpose, and Denmark, one of 
the smallest and weakest kingdoms in the world, found 
herself engaged in conflict with Austria and Prussia combined. 



258 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xix 

The little Danish David had defied two Goliaths to comhat 
at one moment. 

Were the Danes and their Sovereign and their Govern- 
ment mad ? Not at all. They well knew that they could 
not hold out alone against the two German Great Powers. 
But they counted on the help of Europe, and especially of 
England. Lord Eussell in multitudinous despatches had very 
often given the Danish Government sound and sensible advice. 
He had declared, that if Denmark did not follow England's 
advice England would not come to her assistance in case she 
were attacked by the Germans. Denmark interpreted this as 
an assurance that if she followed England's counsels she 
might count on England's protection, and she insisted that 
she had strictly followed England's counsels for this 
very reason. "When the struggle seemed approaching, Lord 
Palmerston said in the House of Commons at the close of a 
session, that if any violent attempt were made to overthrow 
the rights and interfere with the independence of Denmark, 
those who made the attempt would find in the result that it 
would not be Denmark alone with which they would have to 
contend. These words were afterwards explained as intended 
to be merely prophetic, and to indicate Lord Palmerston's 
private belief that in the event of Denmark being invaded, 
France, or Eussia, or some State somewhere, would probably 
be generous enough to come to the assistance of the Danes. 
But when the words were spoken, it did not occur to the 
mind of anyone to interpret them in such a sense. Everyone 
believed that Lord Palmerston was answering on behalf of 
the English Government and the English people. 

The Danes counted with confidence on the help of 
England. They refused to accept the terms which Germany 
would have imposed. They prepared for war. Public opinion 
in England was all but unanimous in favour of Denmark. 
Five out of every six persons were for England's drawing the 
sword in her cause at once. Five out of every six of the 
small minority who were against war were nevertheless in 
sympathy with the Danes. Many reasons combined to bring 
about this condition of national feeling. Austria was not 
popular in England ; Prussia was detested. The Prince of 
Wales had been married to the Princess Alexandra, the 
daughter of the King of Denmark, on March 10, 1863. She 
was not a Dane, but her family had now come to rule in 
Denmark, and she became in that sense a Danish princess. 



ch. xix. THE LAST OF LORD PALMERSTON. 259 

Her youth, her beauty, her goodness, her sweet and winning 
ways, had made her more popular than any foreign princes3 
ever before was known to be in England. It seemed even to 
some who ought to have had more judgment that the virtues 
and charms of the Princess Alexandra, and the fact that she 
was now Princess of Wales, supplied ample proof of the justice 
of the Danish cause, and of the duty of England to support 
it in arms. Not small, therefore, was the disappointment 
spread over the country when it was found that the Danes 
were left alone to their defence, and that England was 
not to put out a hand to help them. Lord Bussell was willing 
at one moment to intervene by arms in support of Denmark 
if France would join with England, and he made a proposal of 
this kind to the French Government. The Emperor Napoleon 
refused to interfere. He had been hurt by England's refusal 
to join with him in sustaining Poland against Eussia, and now 
was his time to make a return. There was absolutely nothing 
for it but to leave the Danes to fight out their battle in the 
best way they could. 

The Danes fought with a great deal of spirit ; but they 
were extravagantly outnumbered, and their weapons were 
miserably unfit to contend against their powerful enemies. 
The Prussian needle-gun came into play with terrible effect 
in the campaign, and it soon made all attempts at resistance 
on the part of the Danes utterly hopeless. The Danes lost 
their ground and their fortresses. They won one little fight 
on the sea, defeating some Austrian vessels in the German 
Ocean off Heligoland. The news was received with wild 
enthusiasm in England. Its announcement in the House of 
Commons drew down the unwonted manifestation of a round 
of applause from the Strangers' Gallery. But the struggle 
had ceased to be anything like a serious campaign. The 
English Government kept up active negotiations on behalf of 
peace, and at length succeeded in inducing the belligerents 
to agree to a suspension of arms, in order that a Conference 
of the Great Powers might be held in London. The delibera- 
tions of the Conference came to nothing. Curiously enough 
the final rejection of all compromise came from the Danes. 
The war broke out again. The renewed hostilities lasted, 
however, but a short time. The Danish Government sent 
Prince John of Denmark direct to Berlin to negotiate for 
peace, and terms of peace were easily arranged. Nothing 
could be more simple. Denmark gave up everything she had 



260 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xijl 

been fighting for, and agreed to bear part of the expense 
which had been entailed upon the German Powers by the 
task of chastising her. The Duchies were surrendered to the 
disposal of the Allies. A new war was to settle the owner- 
ship of the Duchies, and some much graver questions of 
German interest at the same time. 

It was obviously impossible that the conduct of the English 
Government should pass unchallenged. Accordingly, in the 
two Houses of Parliament notices were given of a vote of 
censure on the Government. Lord Malmesbury, in Lord 
Derby's absence, proposed the resolution in the House of 
Lords, and it was carried by a majority of nine. The Govern- 
ment made little account of that ; the Lords always had a 
Tory majority. In the House of Commons, however, the 
matter was much more serious. On July 4, 1864, Mr. Disraeli 
himself moved the resolution condemning the conduct of the 
Government. The resolution invited the House to express 
its regret that 'while the course pursued by her Majesty's 
Government has failed to maintain their avowed policy of 
upholding the integrity and independence of Denmark, it has 
lowered the just influence of this country in the capitals of 
Europe, and thereby diminished the securities for peace.' 
Mr. Disraeli's speech was ingenious and telling. The Govern- 
ment did not make any serious attempts to justify all they 
had done. They were glad to seize upon the opportunity 
offered by an amendment which Mr. Kinglake proposed, and 
which merely declared the satisfaction with which the House 
had learned * that at this conjuncture her Majesty had been 
advised to abstain from armed intervention in the war now 
going on between Denmark and the German Powers.' This 
amendment, it will be seen at once, did not meet the accusa- 
tions raised by Mr. Disraeli. It simply asserted that the House 
was, at all events, glad to hear there was to be no interference 
in the war. Lord Palmerston, however, had an essentially 
practical way of looking at every question. He was of opinion, 
with O'Connell, that, after all, the verdict is the thing. He 
knew he could not get the verdict on the particular issues 
raised by Mr. Disraeli, but he was in good hope that he could 
get it on the policy of his administration generally. 

His speech closing the debate was a masterpiece not of 
eloquence, not of political argument, but of practical Parlia- 
mentary tactics. He spoke, as was his fashion, without the 
aid of a single note. It was a wonderful spectacle that of the 



ch. xix. THE LAST OF LORD PALMERSTON. 261 

man of eighty, thus in the growing morning pouring out his 
unbroken stream of easy effective eloquence. He dropped the 
particular questions connected with the vote of censure almost 
immediately, and went into a long review of the whole policy 
of his administration. He spoke as if the resolution before 
the House were a proposal to impeach the Government for 
the entire course of their domestic policy. He passed in 
triumphant review all the splendid feats which Mr. Gladstone 
had accomplished in the reduction of taxation ; he took credit 
for the commercial treaty with France, and for other achieve- 
ments in which at the time of their accomplishment he had 
hardly even affected to feel an interest. He spoke directly at 
the economical Liberals ; the men who were for sound finance 
and freedom of international commerce. The regular Oppo- 
sition, as he well knew, would vote against him ; the regular 
supporters of the Ministry would vote for him. Nothing could 
alter the course to be taken by either of these parties. The 
advanced Liberals, the men whom possibly Palmerston in his 
heart rather despised as calculators and economists, — these 
might be affected one way or the other by the manner in 
which he addressed himself to the debate. To these and 
at these he spoke. He knew that Mr. Gladstone was the one 
leading man in the Ministry whom they regarded with full 
trust and admiration, and on Mr. Gladstone's exploits he 
virtually rested his case. His speech said in plain words : ' If 
you vote for this resolution proposed by Mr. Disraeli you turn 
Mr. Gladstone out of office ; you give the Tories, who under- 
stand nothing about Free Trade, and who opposed the French 
Commercial Treaty, an opportunity of marring all that he has 
made.* Some of Lord Palmerston's audience were a little 
impatient now and then. * What has all this to do with the 
question before the House ? ' was murmured from more than 
one bench. It had everything to do with the question that 
was really before the House. That question was, * Shall 
Palmerston remain in office, or shall he go out and the Tories 
come in ? ' When the division was taken Lord Palmerston 
was saved by a majority of eighteen. It was not a very 
brilliant victory. There were not many votes to spare. But 
it was a victory. The Conservative miss by a foot was as 
good for Lord Palmerston as a miss by a mile. It gave him 
a secure tenure of office for the rest of his life. Such as it 
was, the victory was won mainly by his own skill, energy, and 
astuteness, by the ready manner in which he evaded the 



26a A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xix. 

question actually in debate, and rested his claim to acquittal 
on services which no one proposed to disparage. 

That was the last great speech made by Lord Palmerston. 
That was the last great occasion on which he was called upon 
to address the House of Commons. The effort was worthy ol 
the emergency, and, at least in an artistic sense, deserved 
success. The speech exactly served its purpose. It had no 
brilliant passages. It had no hint of an elevated thought. 
It did not trouble itself with any profession of exalted purpose 
or principle. It did not contain a single sentence that anyone 
would care to remember after the emergency had passed away. 
But it did for Lord Palmerston what great eloquence might 
have failed to do ; what a great orator by virtue of his very 
genius and oratorical instincts might only have marred. It 
took captive the wavering minds, and it carried the division. 

One cannot study English politics, even in the most 
superficial way, without being struck by the singular 
regularity with which they are governed by the law of 
action and reaction. The succession of ebb and flow in the 
tides is not more regular and more certain. A season of poli- 
tical energy is sure to come after a season of political apathy. 
The movement of reaction against Keform in domestic 
policy was in full force during the earlier years of Lord 
Palmerston's Government. In home politics, and where 
finance and commercial legislation were not concerned, 
Palmerston was a Conservative Minister. He was probably 
on the whole more highly esteemed among the rank and file 
of the Opposition in the House of Commons than by the 
rank and file on his own side. Not a few of the Conservative 
country gentlemen would in their hearts have been glad if he 
could have remained Prime Minister for ever. Many of those 
who voted, with their characteristic fidelity to party, for 
Mr. Disraeli's resolution of censure, were glad in their hearts 
that Lord Palmerston came safely out of the difficulty. 
But as the years went on there were manifest signs of the 
coming and inevitable reaction. One of the most striking 
of these indications was found in the position taken by Mr. 
Gladstone. For some time Mr. Gladstone had been more 
and more distinctly identifying himself with the opinions of 
the advanced Liberals. The advanced Liberals themselves 
were of two sections or fractions, working together almost 
always, but very distinct in complexion; and it was Mr. 
Gladstone's fortune to be drawn by his sympathies to both 



CH. xir. THE LAST OF LORD PALMERSTOM 263 

alike. He was of course drawn towards the Manchester 
School by his economic views ; by his agreement with them 
on all subjects relating to finance and to freedom of commerce. 
But the Manchester Liberals were for non-intervention in 
foreign politics ; and they carried this into their sympathies 
as well as into their principles. The other section of the 
advanced Liberals were sometimes even flightily eager in their 
sympathies with the Liberal movements of the Continent. 
Mr. Gladstone was in communion with the movements of 
foreign Liberals, as he was with those of English Free-traders 
and economists. He was therefore qualified to stand between 
both sections of the advanced Liberals of England, and give 
one hand to each. During the debates on Italian questions 
of 1860 and 1861 he had identified himself with the cause of 
Italian unity and independence. 

In the year 1864 Garibaldi came on a visit to England, 
and was received in London with an outburst of enthusiasm, 
the like whereof had not been seen since Kossuth first passed 
down Cheapside, and perhaps was not seen even then. At 
first the leading men of nearly all parties held aloof except 
Mr. Gladstone. He was among the very first and most cordial 
in his welcome to Garibaldi. Then the Liberal leaders in 
general thought they had better consult for their popularity 
by taking Garibaldi up. Then the Conservative leaders too 
began to think it would never do for them to hold back when 
the prospect of a general election was so closely overshadow- 
ing them, and they plunged into the Garibaldi welcome. The 
peerage then rushed at Garibaldi. The crowd in the streets 
were perfectly sincere, some acclaiming Garibaldi because they 
had a vague knowledge that he had done brave deeds some- 
where, and represented a cause ; others, perhaps the majority, 
because they assumed that he was somehow opposed to the 
Pope. The leaders of society were for the most part not 
sincere. The whole thing ended in a quarrel between the 
aristocracy and the democracy ; and Garibaldi was got back 
to his island somehow. Mr. Gladstone was one of the few 
among the leaders who were undoubtedly sincere, and the 
course he took made him a great favourite with the advanced 
Badicals. 

Mr. Gladstone had given other indications of a distinct 
tendency to pass over altogether from Conservatism, and even 
from Peelism, into the ranks of the Eadical Keformers. On 
May 11, 1864, a private member brought on a motion in the 



264 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. XIX. 

House of Commons for the reduction of the borough fran- 
chise from 10Z. rental to 61. During the debate that followed 
Mr. Gladstone made a remarkable declaration. He contended 
that the burden of proof rested upon those ' who would ex- 
clude forty-nine fiftieths of the working classes from the 
franchise ; ' ' it is for them to show the unworthiness, the 
incapacity, and the misconduct of the working class.' ' I say,' 
he repeated, ' that every man who is not presumably incapaci- 
tated by some consideration of personal unfitness or political 
danger, is morally entitled to come within the pale of the 
constitution.' The bill was rejected, but the speech of Mr. 
Gladstone gave an importance to the debate and to the occa- 
sion which it would not be easy to overrate. The position 
taken up by all Conservative minds, no matter to which side 
of politics their owners belonged, had been that the claim 
must be made out for those seeking an extension of the suffrage 
in their favour ; that they must show imperative public need, 
immense and clear national and political advantage, to justify 
the concession ; that the mere fact of their desire and fitnes3 
for the franchise ought not to count for anything in the con- 
sideration. Mr. Gladstone's way of looking at the question 
created enthusiasm on the one side — consternation and anger 
on the other. Early in the following session there was a 
motion introduced by Mr. Dillwyn, a staunch and persevering 
Reformer, declaring that the position of the Irish State Church 
was unsatisfactory, and called for the early attention of her 
Majesty's Government. Mr. Gladstone spoke on the motion, 
and drew a contrast between the State Church of England 
and that of Ireland, pointing out that the Irish Church 
ministered only to the religious wants of one-eighth or one- 
ninth of the community amid which it was established. The 
eyes of all Radical Reformers, therefore, began to turn to 
Mr. Gladstone as the future Minister of Reform in Church 
and State. He became from the same moment an object of 
distrust, and something approaching to detestation, in the 
yes of all steady-going Conservatives. 

Meanwhile there were many changes taking place in the 
social and political life of England. Many eminent men 
passed away during the years that Lord Palmerston held his 
almost absolute sway over the House of Commons. One 
man we may mention in the first instance, although he was 
no politician, and his death in no wise affected the prospects 
of parties. The attention of the English people was called 



ch. xix. THE LAST OF LORD PALMERSTON. 265 

from questions of foreign policy and of possible intervention 
in the Danish quarrel, by an event which happened on the 
Christmas eve of 18G3. That day it became known through- 
out London that the author of * Vanity Fair ' was dead. Mr. 
Thackeray died suddenly at the house in Kensington which 
he had lately had built for him in the fashion of that Queen 
Anne period which he loved and had illustrated so admirably. 
He was still in the very prime of life ; no one had expected 
that his career was so soon to close. It had not been in any 
sense a long career. Success had come somewhat late to 
him, and he was left but a short time to enjoy it. He had 
established himself in the very foremost rank of English 
novelists ; with Fielding and Goldsmith and Miss Austen and 
Dickens. He had been a literary man and hardly anything 
else ; having had little to do with politics or political journalism. 
Once indeed he was seized with a sudden ambition to take a 
seat in the House of Commons, and at the general election of 
1857 he offered himself as a candidate for the city of Oxford 
in opposition to Mr. Cardwell. He was not elected ; and he 
seemed to accept failure cheerfully as a hint that he had better 
keep to literary work for the future. He would go back to his 
author's desk, he said good-humouredly ; and he kept his 
word. It is not likely he would have been a parliamentary 
success. He had no gift of speech and had but little interest 
in the details of party politics. His political views were 
sentiments rather than opinions. It is not true that suc- 
cess in Parliament is incompatible with literary distinction. 
Macaulay and Grote, and two of Thackeray's own craft, Lord 
Beaconsfield and Lord Lytton, may be called as recent wit- 
nesses to disprove that common impression. But these were 
men who had a distinctly political object, or who loved political 
life, and were only following their star when they sought seats 
in the House of Commons. Thackeray had no such vocation, 
and would have been as much out of place in parliamentary 
debate as a painter or a musician. He had no need to covet 
parliamentary reputation. As it was well said when the news 
of his defeat at Oxford reached London, the Houses of Lords 
and Commons together could not have produced ' Barry 
Lyndon ' and ' Pendennis.' His early death was a source 
not only of national but of world-wide regret. It eclipsed 
the Christmas gaiety of nations. If Thackeray died too soon, 
it was only too soon for his family and his friends. His fame 
was secure. He could hardly with any length of years have 
added a cubit to his literary stature. 
12 



266 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xix. 

A whole group of statesmen had passed prematurely away. 
Sir James Graham had died after several years of a quiet 
career ; still a celebrity in the House of Commons, but not 
much in the memory of the public outside it. One of his 
latest speeches in Parliament was on the Chinese war of 1860. 
On the last day of the session of 1861, and when almost all 
the other members had left the House, he remained for a while 
talking with a friend and former colleague, and as they were 
separating, Sir James Graham expressed a cheery hope that 
they should meet on the first day of the next session in the 
same place. But Graham died in the following October. 
Sidney Herbert had died a few months before in the same 
year. Sidney Herbert had been raised to the peerage as Lord 
Herbert of Lea. He had entered the House of Lords because 
his breaking health rendered it impossible for him to stand the 
wear and tear of life in the Commons, and he loved politics and 
public affairs, and could not be induced to renounce them and 
live in quiet. He was a man of great gifts, and was looked 
upon as a prospective Prime Minister. He had a graceful and 
gracious bearing ; he was an able administrator, and a very 
skilful and persuasive debater. He never declaimed ; never 
even tried to be what is commonly called eloquent ; but his 
sentences came out with a singularly expressive combination of 
force and ease, every argument telling, every stroke having the 
lightness of an Eastern champion's sword-play. He had high 
social station, and was in every way fitted to stand at the hea£ 
of English public affairs. He was but fifty-one years of ago 
when he died. The country for some time looked on Siv 
George Lewis as a man likely to lead an administration ; buV 
he too passed away before his natural time. He died two yearfr 
after Sir James Graham and Sidney Herbert, and was only 
some fifty-seven years old at his death. Lord Elgin was dead 
and Lord Canning; and Lord Dalhousie had been soma 
years dead. The Duke of Newcastle died in 1864. Nor musi 
we omit to mention the death of Cardinal Wiseman oa 
February 15, 1865. Cardinal Wiseman had outlived the 
popular clamour once raised against him in England. There 
was a time when his name would have set all the pulpit- 
drums of no-Popery rattling ; he came at length to be 
respected and admired everywhere in England as a scholar and 
a man of ability. He was a devoted ecclesiastic, whose zeal 
for his church was his honour, and whose earnest labour in the 
work he was set to do had shortened his busy life. 



CH. xix. THE LAST OF LORD PALMERSTOH. 267 

During the time from the first outbreak of the Civil 
War in the United States to its close all these men were 
removed from the scene, and the Civil War was hardly 
over when Eichard Cobden was quietly laid in an English 
country churchyard. Mr. Cobden paid a visit to his con- 
stituents of Eochdale in November 1864, and spoke to a 
great public meeting on public affairs, and he did not appear 
to have lacked any of his usual ease and energy. This 
was Cobden's last speech. He did not come up to London 
until the March of 1865, and the day on which he travelled 
was so bitterly cold that the bronchial affection from which 
he was suffering became cruelly aggravated. He sank 
rapidly, and on April 2 he died. The scene in the House of 
Commons next evening was very touching. Lord Palmerston 
and Mr. Disraeli both spoke of Cobden with genuine feeling 
and sympathy ; but Mr. Bright's few and broken words were 
as noble an epitaph as friendship could wish for the grave of a 
great and a good man. 

The Liberal party found themselves approaching a general 
election, with their ranks thinned by many severe losses. 
The Government had lost one powerful member by an 
^vent other than death. The Lord Chancellor, Lord West- 
bury, had resigned his office in consequence of a vote of the 
House of Commons. Lord Westbury had made many enemies. 
He was a man of great capacity and energy, into whose nature 
the scorn of forms and of lesser intelligences entered far too 
freely. His character was somewhat wanting in the dignity of 
moral elevation. He had a tongue of marvellous bitterness. 
His sarcastic power was probably unequalled in the House of 
Commons while he sat there ; and when he came into the 
House of Lords he fairly took away the breath of stately and 
formal peers by the unsparing manner in which he employed 
his most dangerous gift. His style of cruel irony was made all 
the more effective by the peculiar suavity of the tone in which 
he gave out his sarcasms and his epithets. With a face that 
only suggested soft bland benevolence, with eyes half closed as 
those of a mediasval saint, and in accents of subdued melliflu- 
ous benignity, the Lord Chancellor was wont to pour out a 
stream of irony that corroded like some deadly acid. Such a 
man was sure to make enemies ; and the time came when, in 
the Scriptural sense, they found him out. He had been lax in 
his manner of using his patronage. In one case he had 
allowed an official of the House of Lords to retire, and to 



268 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xix. 

receive a retiring pension, while a grave charge connected with 
his conduct in another public office was to Lord Westbury's 
knowledge impending over hirn; and Lord Westbury had 
appointed his own son to the place thus vacated. Thus at 
first sight it naturally appeared that Lord Westbury had sanc- 
tioned the pensioning off of a public servant, against whom a 
serious charge was still awaiting decision, in order that a place 
might be found for the Lord Chancellor's own son. 

The question was taken up by the House of Commons ; 
and somewhat unfortunately taken up in the first instance by 
a strong political opponent of the Government. On July 3, 
1865, Mr. Ward Hunt moved a distinct vote of censure on the 
Lord Chancellor. The House did not agree to the resolution, 
which would have branded the Lord Chancellor's conduct as 
' highly reprehensible, and calculated to throw discredit on the 
administration of the high offices of the State.' It, however, 
accepted an amendment which, while acquitting Lord West- 
bury of any corrupt motive, declared that the granting of the 
pension showed a laxity of practice and want of caution with 
regard to the public interests on the part of the Lord Chan- 
cellor. The Government were not able to resist this resolution. 
Lord Palmerston made the best effort he could to save the 
Lord Chancellor ; but the common feeling of the House held 
that the words of the amendment were not too strong ; and the 
Government had to bow to it. The Lord Chancellor imme- 
diately resigned his office. No other course was fairly open to 
him. The Government lost a man of singular ability and 
energy. Many thought, when all was done, that he had been 
somewhat harshly used. He would, perhaps, have been 
greatly surprised himself to know how many kindly things 
were said of him. 

The hour of political reaction was evidently near at hand. 
Five years had passed away since the withdrawal of Lord John 
Russell's Eeform Bill ; and five years may represent in ordinary 
calculation the ebb or flow of the political tide. The dissolu- 
tion of Parliament was near. Lord Derby described the Speech 
from the Throne at the opening of the session of 1865 as 
a sort of address very proper to be delivered by an aged 
minister to a moribund Parliament. The Parliament had 
run its course. It had accomplished the rare feat of living out 
its days, and having to die by simple efflux of time. On 
July 6, 1865, Parliament was dissolved. 

The first blow was struck in the City of London, and the 



ch. xix. THE LAST OF LORD PALMERSTON. 269 

Liberals carried all the seats. Four Liberals were elected. In 
Westminster the contest was somewhat remarkable. The con- 
stituency of Westminster always had the generous ambition to 
wish to be represented by at least one man of distinction. 
Mr. Mill was induced to come out of his calm retirement in 
Avignon and accept the candidature for Westminster. - He 
issued an address embodying his well-known political opinions. 
He declined to look after local business, and on principle he 
objected to pay any part of the expenses of election. It was 
felt to be a somewhat bold experiment to put forward such a 
man as Mill among the candidates for the representation of a 
popular constituency. His opinions were extreme. He was 
not known to belong to any church or religious denomination. 
He was a philosopher, and English political organisations do 
not love philosophers. He was almost absolutely unknown to 
his countrymen in general. Until he came forward as a leader of 
the agitation in favour of the Northern Cause during the Civil 
War, he had never, so far as we know, been seen on an Eng- 
lish political platform. Even of the electors of Westminster, 
very few had ever seen him before his candidature. Many were 
under the vague impression that he was a clever man who 
wrote wise books and died long ago. He was not supposed to 
have any liking or capacity for parliamentary life. More than 
ten years before it was known to a few that he had been invited 
to stand for an Irish county and had declined. That was at 
the time when his observations on the Irish land tenure 
system and the condition of Ireland generally had filled the 
hearts of many Irishmen with delight and wonder — delight and 
wonder to find that a cold English philosopher and economist 
should form such just and generous opinions about Irish ques- 
tions, and should express them with such a noble courage. Since 
that time he had not been supposed to have any inclination for 
public life ; nor we believe had any serious effort been madf to 
tempt him out of his retirement. The idea now occurred to Mr. 
James Beal, a popular Westminster politician, and he pressed 
it so earnestly on Mill as a public duty that Mill did not feel at 
liberty to refuse. Mill was one of the few men who have only 
to be convinced that a thing is incumbent on them as a 
public duty to set about doing it forthwith, no matter how 
distasteful it might be to them personally, or what excellent 
excuses they might offer for leaving the duty to others. He 
had written things which might well make him doubtful 
about the prudence of courting the suffrages of an English 



270 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. XIX. 

popular constituency. He was understood to be a rationalist ; 
he was a supporter of many political opinions that seemed to 
ordinary persons much like crotchets, or even crazes. He had 
once said in his writings, that the working classes in England 
were given to lying. He had now to stand up on platforms 
before crowded and noisy assemblies where everything ho 
had ever written or said could be made the subject of question 
and of accusation, and with enemies outside capable of tor- 
turing every explanation to his disadvantage. A man of inde- 
pendent opinions, and who has not been ashamed to change 
his opinions when he thought them wrong, or afraid to put on 
record each opinion in the time when he held to it, is at much 
disadvantage on the hustings. He will find out there what it 
is to have written books and to have enemies. Mill triumphed 
over all the difficulties by downright courage and honesty. 
When asked at a public meeting chiefly composed of working 
men, whether he had ever said the working classes were given 
to lying, he answered straight out, ' I did ; ' a bold blunt ad- 
mission without any qualification. The boldness and frankness 
of the reply struck home to the manhood of the working men 
who listened to him. Here they saw a leader who would never 
shrink from telling them the truth. They greeted his answer 
with vehement applause, and Mr. Mill was returned to Parlia- 
ment by a majority of some hundreds over the Conservative 
competitor. 

In many other instances there was a marked indication 
that the political tide had turned in favour of Liberal opinions. 
Mr. Thomas Hughes, author of * Tom Brown's Schooldays,' 
was returned for Lambeth. Mr. Duncan M'Laren, brother- 
in-law of Mr. Bright, and an advanced Badical, was elected 
for Edinburgh, unseating a mild Whig. Mr. Gr. 0. Trevelyan, 
a brilliant young Badical, nephew of Macaulay, came into 
Paiiament. In Ireland some men of strong opinions, of 
ability and of high character found seats in the House of 
Commons for the first time. One of these was Mr. J. B. 
Dillon, a man who had been concerned in the Irish Bebellion 
of 1848. Mr. Dillon had lived for some years in the United 
States, and had lately returned to Ireland under an amnesty. 
He at once reassumed a leading part in Irish politics and won 
a high reputation for his capacity and his integrity. He pro- 
mised to have an influential part in bringing together the 
Irish members and the English Badicals, but his untimely 
death cut short what would unquestionably have been a very 



CH. xix. THE LAST OF LORD PALMERSTON. 271 

useful career. Wherever there was a change in the character 
of the new Parliament it seemed to be in favour of advanced 
Reform. It was not merely that the Tories were left in a 
minority, but that so many mild Whigs had been removed to 
give place to genuine Liberals. Mr. Disraeli himself spoke 
of the new Parliament as one which had distinctly increased 
the strength and the following of Mr. Bright. No one could 
fail to see, he pointed out, that Mr. Bright occupied a very 
different position now from that which he had held in the late 
Parliament. New men had come into the House of Commons, 
men of integrity and ability, who were above all things 
advanced Reformers. The position of Mr. Gladstone was 
markedly changed. He had been defeated at the University of 
Oxford by Mr. Gathorne Hardy, but was at once put in 
nomination for South Lancashire, which was still open, and 
he was elected there. His severance from the University 
was regarded by the Liberals as his political emancipation. 
The Reformers then would have at their head the two great 
Parliamentary orators (one of them undoubtedly the future 
Prime Minister), and the philosophical writer and thinker of 
the day. This Liberal triumvirate, as they were called, 
would have behind them many new and earnest men, to 
whom their words would be a law. The alarmed Tories said 
to themselves that between England and the democratic 
flood there was left but one barrier, and that was in the 
person of the old statesman now in his eighty-first year, of 
whom more and more doubtful rumours began to arrive in 
London every day. 

Down in Hertfordshire Lord Palmerston was dying. 
Long as his life was, if counted by mere years, it seems 
much longer still when we consider what it had compassed, 
and how active it had been from the earliest to the very end. 
Many men were older than Lord Palmerston ; he left more 
than one senior behind him. But they were for the most 
part men whose work had long been done ; men who had 
been consigned to the arm-chair of complete inactivity. Pal- 
merston was a hard working statesman until within a very 
few days of his death. He had been a member of Parliament 
for nearly sixty years. He entered Parliament for the first 
time in the year when Byron, like himself a Harrow boy, 
published his first poems. He had been in the House of 
Commons for thirty years when the Queen came to the 
throne. During all his political career he was only out of 
office for rare and brief seasons. 



272 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. XIX. 

It was only during the session of 1885 that Lord Palmer- 
ston began to give evidence that he was suffering severely at 
last from that affliction which has been called the most 
terrible of all diseases — old age. Up to the beginning of that 
year he had, despite his occasional fits of gout, scarcely shown 
any signs of actual decay. But during the session of 1865 
Lord Palmerston suffered much for some of the later months. 
His eyesight had become very weak, and even with the 
help of strong glasses he found it difficult to read. He was 
getting feeble in every way. He ceased to have that joy 
of the strife which inspired him during Parliamentary debate 
even up to the attainment of his eightieth year. He had 
kept up his bodily vigour and the youthful elasticity of his 
spirits so long, that it must have come on him with the 
shock of a painful surprise when he first found that his frame 
and his nerves were beyond doubt giving way, and that he too 
must succumb to the cruel influence of years. The collapse 
of his vigour came on almost at a stroke. Lord Palmerston 
began to discontinue his attendances at the House ; when he 
did attend, it was evident that he went through his Parlia- 
mentary duties with difficulty and even with pain. The 
Tiverton election on the dissolution of Parliament was hia 
last public appearance. He went from Tiverton to Brocket, 
in Hertfordshire, a place which Lady Palmerston had in- 
herited from Lord Melbourne, her brother ; and there he re- 
mained. The gout had become very serious now. It had flown 
to a dangerous place ; and Lord Palmerston had made the 
danger greater by venturing with his too youthful energy to 
ride out before he had nearly recovered from one severe 
attack. On October 17 a bulletin was issued, announcing 
that Lord Palmerston had been seriously ill, in consequence 
of having taken cold, but that he had been steadily improving 
for three days, and was then much better. Somehow this 
announcement failed to reassure people in London. Many 
had only then for the first time heard that Palmerston was ill, 
and the bare mention of the fact fell ominously on the ear of the 
public. The very next morning these suspicions were confirmed. 
It was announced that Lord Palmerston's condition had sud- 
denly altered for the worse, and that he was gradually sinking. 
Then everyone knew that the end was near. There was no sur- 
prise when the news came next day that Palmerston was dead. 
He died on October 18. Had he only lived two days longer 
he would have completed his eighty-first year. He was buried 



CH. xix. THE LAST OF LORD PALMERSTON. 273 

in Westminster Abbey with public honours on October 27. 
No man since the death of the Duke of Wellington had filled 
so conspicuous a place in the public mind. No man had 
enjoyed anything like the same amount of popularity. He died 
at the moment when that popularity had reachedits very zenith. 
It had become the fashion of the day to praise all he said and 
all he did. It was the settled canon of the ordinary English- 
man's faith that what Palmerston said England must feel. To 
stand forward as the opponent, or even the critic, of any- 
thing done or favoured by him was to be unpopular and un- 
patriotic. Lord Palmerston had certainly lived long enough in 
years, in enjoyment, in fame. 

The regret for Palmerston was very general and very 
genuine. Privately, he can hardly have had any enemies. 
He had a kindly heart, which won on all people who came 
near him. He had no enduring enmities or capricious 
dislikes ; and it was therefore very hard for ill-feeling to 
live in his beaming, friendly presence. He never disliked 
men merely because he had often to encounter them in 
political war. He tried his best to give them as good as 
they brought, and he bore no malice. There were some men 
whom he disliked, but they were men who for one reason or 
another stood persistently in his way, and who he fancied he 
had reason to believe had acted treacherously towards him. 
His manners were frank and genial rather than polished ; and 
his is one of the rare instances in which a man contrived 
always to keep up his personal dignity without any stateliness 
of bearing and tone. He was a model combatant ; when the 
combat was over, he was ready to sit down by his antagonist's 
side and be his friend, and talk over their experiences and 
exploits. He was absolutely free from affectation. This very 
fact gave sometimes an air almost of roughness to his manners, 
he could be so plain-spoken and downright when suddenly 
called on to express his mind. Personally truthful and honour- 
able of course it would be superfluous to pronounce him. But 
Palmerston was too often willing to distinguish between the 
personal and the political integrity of a statesman. The 
gravest errors of this kind which Palmerston had committed 
were committed for an earlier generation. The general public 
of 1865 took small account of them. Not many would have 
cared much then about the grim story of Sir Alexander Burnes' 
despatches, or the manner in which Palmerston had played 
with the hopes of foreign Liberalism, conducting it more than 

12* 



274 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. xix. 

once rather to its grave than to its triumph. These thinga 
lived only in the minds of a few at the time when the news of 
his death came, and even of that few not many were anxious 
to dwell upon them. 

Lord Palmerston is not to be judged by his domestic policy. 
Palmerston was himself only in the Foreign Office and in the 
House of Commons. In both alike the recognition of his true 
capacity came very late. His Parliamentary training had been 
perfected before its success was acknowledged. He was there- 
fore able to use his faculties at any given moment to their 
fullest stretch. He could always count on them. They had 
been so well drilled by long practice that they would instantly 
come at call. He understood the moods of the House of Com- 
mons to perfection. He could play upon those moods as a per- 
former does upon the keys of an instrument. He saw what 
men were in the mood to do, and he did it ; and they were 
clear that that must be a great leader who led them just 
whither they felt inclined to go. Much earnestness he knew 
bored the House, and he took care never to be much in 
earnest. He left it to others to be eloquent. Lord Palmer- 
ston never cared to go deeper in his speeches than the surface 
in everything. He had no splendid phraseology ; and probably 
would not have cared to make any display of splendid phrase- 
ology even if he had the gift. No speech of his would be read 
except for the present interest of the subject. No passages 
from Lord Palmerston are quoted by anybody. He always 
selected, and doubtless by a kind of instinct, not the argu- 
ments which were most logically cogent, but those which 
"rc ere most likely to suit the character and the temper of the 
audience he happened to be addressing. He spoke for his 
hearers, not for himself ; to affect the votes of those to whom 
he was appealing, not for the sake of expressing any deep 
irrepressible convictions of his own. He never talked over 
the heads of his audience, or compelled them to strain their 
intellects in order to keep pace with his flights. No other 
statesman of our time could interpose so dexterously just 
before the division to break the effect of some telling speech 
against him, and to bring the House into a frame of mind for 
regarding all t iat had been done by the Opposition as a mere 
piece of political ceremonial, gone through in deference to the 
traditions or the formal necessities of party, on which it would 
be a waste of time to bestow serious thought. 

The jests of Lord Palmerston always had a purpose in them, 



CH. xix. THE LAST OF LORD PALMERSTON. 27$ 

and were "better adapted to the occasion and the moment than 
the repartees of the best debater in the House. At one time, 
indeed, he flung his jests and personalities about in somewhat 
too reckless a fashion, and he made many enemies. But of 
late years, whether from growing discretion or kindly feeling, 
he seldom indulged in any pleasantries that could wound or 
offend. During his last Parliament he represented to the full 
the average head and heart of a House of Commons singularly 
devoid of high ambition or steady purpose ; a House peculiarly 
intolerant of eccentricity, especially if it were that of genius ; 
impatient of having its feelings long strained in any one 
direction, delighting only in ephemeral interests and excite- 
ments ; hostile to anything which drew heavily on the energy 
or the intelligence. Such a House naturally acknowledged a 
heavy debt of gratitude to the statesman who never either 
puzzled or bored them. Men who distrusted Mr. Disraeli's 
antitheses, and were frightened by Mr. Gladstone's earnestness, 
found as much relief in the easy, pleasant, straightforward 
talk of Lord Palmerston, as a schoolboy finds in a game of 
marbles after a problem or a sermon. 



CHAPTEK XX. 

THE NEW GOVERNMENT. 

Lord Eussell was invited by the Queen to form a Govern- 
ment after the death of Lord Palmerston. According to 
some rumours the opportunity would be taken to admit the 
Radical element to an influence in the actual councils of the 
nation such as it had never enjoyed before, and such as its 
undoubted strength in Parliament and the country now 
entitled it to have. The only changes, however, in the 
Cabinet were that Lord Eussell became Prime Minister, and 
that Lord Clarendon, who had been Chancellor of the Duchy 
of Lancaster, succeeded him as Foreign Secretary. One or 
two new men were brought into offices which did not give a 
seat in the Cabinet. Among these were Mr. Forster, who 
became Under-Secretary for the Colonies in the room of Mr. 
Chichester Fortescue, now Irish Secretary, and Mr. Goschen, 
who succeeded Mr. Hutt as Vice-President of the Board of 
Trade. Both Mr. Forster and Mr. Goschen soon afterwards 



276 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xx. 

came to hold high official position, and to have seats in tha 
Cabinet. In each instance the appointment was a concession 
to the growing Liberal feeling of the day ; but the concession 
was slight and cautious. The country knew little about either 
Mr. Forster or Mr. Goschen at the time ; and it will easily 
be imagined that those who thought a seat in the Cabinet for 
Mr. Bright was due to the people more even than to the man, 
and who had some hopes of seeing a similar place offered to 
Mr. Mill, were not satisfied by the arrangement which called 
two comparatively obscure men to unimportant office. The 
outer public did not quite appreciate the difficulties which a 
Liberal minister had to encounter in compromising between 
the Whigs and the Eadicals. The Whigs included almost 
all the members of the party who were really influential by 
virtue of hereditary rank and noble station. It was impossible 
to overlook their claims. Some of the Whigs probably looked 
with alarm enough at the one serious change brought about by 
the death of Lord Palmerston : the change which made Mr. 
Gladstone leader of the House of Commons. 

Meanwhile there were some important changes in the actual 
condition of things. The House of Commons, elected just 
before Lord Palmerston's death, was in many respects a far 
different House from that which it had been his last ministerial 
act to dissolve. Death had made many changes. There were 
changes, too, not brought about by death. The Lord John 
Eussell of the Eeform Bill had been made a Peer, and sat as 
Earl Eussell in the House of Lords. Mr. Lowe, one of the 
ablest and keenest of political critics, who had for a while 
been shut down under the responsibilities of office, was a free 
lance once more. Mr.' Lowe, who had before that held office 
two or three times, was Vice-President of the Committee of 
Council on Education from the beginning of Lord Palmerston's 
administration until April 1864. At that time a vote of 
censure was carried against his department, in other words 
against himself, on the motion of Lord Eobert Cecil, for 
alleged ' mutilation ' of the reports of the Inspectors of 
Schools, done, as it was urged, in order to bring the reports 
into seeming harmony with the educational views entertained 
by the Committee of Council. Lord Eobert Cecil introduced 
the resolution in a speech singularly bitter and offensive. 
The motion was carried by a majority of 101 to 93. Mr. 
Lowe instantly resigned his office ; but he did not allow the 
matter to rest there. He obtained the appointment of a 



CH. xx. THE NEW GOVERNMENT. a?7 

committee to inquire into the whole subject ; and the result 
of the inquiry was not only that Mr. Lowe was entirely 
exonerated from the charge made against him, but that the 
resolution of the House of Commons was actually rescinded. 
It is probable, however, that Mr. Lowe felt that the Govern- 
ment of which he was a member had not given him all the 
support he might have expected. It is certain that if Lord 
Palmerston and his leading colleagues had thrown any great 
energy into their support of him, the vote of censure never 
could have been carried, and would not have had to be 
rescinded. This fact was brought back to the memory of 
many not long after, when Mr. Lowe, still an outsider, be- 
came the very Coriolanus of a sudden movement against the 
Eeform policy of a Liberal Government. On the other hand, 
Mr. Layard, once a daring and somewhat reckless opponent 
of Government and governments, had been bound over to 
the peace, quietly enmeshed in the discipline of subordinate 
office. Yet the former fire was not wholly gone ; it flamed 
up again on opportunity given. Perhaps Mr. Layard proved 
most formidable to his own colleagues, when he sometimes had 
to come into the ring to sustain their common cause. The 
old vigour of the professional gladiator occasionally drove him 
a little too heedlessly against the Opposition. So combative 
a temperament found it hard to submit always to the prosaic 
rigour of mere fact and the proprieties of official decorum. 

The change in the leadership of the House of Commons 
was of course the most remarkable, and the most momen- 
tous, of the alterations that had taken place. From Lord 
Palmerston, admired almost to hero-worship by Whigs and 
Conservatives, the foremost position had suddenly passed to 
Mr. Gladstone, whose admirers were the most extreme of 
the Liberals, and who was distrusted and dreaded by all of 
Conservative instincts and sympathies, on the one side of the 
House as well as on the other. Mr. Gladstone and Mr. 
Disraeli were now brought directly face to face. One led the 
House, the other led the Opposition. With so many pomts 
of difference, and even of contrast, there was one slight 
resemblance in the political situation of Mr. Gladstone and 
Mr. Disraeli. Each was looked on with a certain doubt and 
dread by a considerable number of his own followers. It is 
evident that in such a state of things the strategical advantage 
lay with the leader of Opposition. He had not to take the 
initiative in anything, and the least loyal of his followers 



278 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xx 

would cordially serve under him in any effort to thwart a 
movement made by the Ministry. It came to be seen how- 
ever before long that the Conservative leader was able to 
persuade his party to accept those very changes against which 
some of the followers of Mr. Gladstone were found ready tc 
revolt. In order that some of the events to follow may not 
appear very mysterious, it is well to bear in mind that the 
formation of the new Ministry under Lord Eussell had by no 
means given all the satisfaction to certain sections of the 
Liberal party which they believed themselves entitled to 
expect. Some were displeased because the new Government 
was not Eadical enough. Some were alarmed because they 
fancied it was likely to go too far for the purpose of pleasing 
the Eadicals. Some were vexed because men whom they 
looked up to as their natural leaders had not been invited to 
office. A few were annoyed because their own personal 
claims had been overlooked. One thing was certain : the 
Government must make a distinct move of some kind in 
the direction of Eeform. So many new and energetic 
Liberals and Eadicals had entered the House of Commons 
now that it would be impossible for any Liberal Government 
to hold office on the terms which had of late been conceded 
to Lord Palmerston. Mr. Gladstone had always been credited 
with a sensitive earnestness of temper which was commonly 
believed to have given trouble to his more worldly and easy- 
going colleagues in the Cabinet of Lord Palmerston. It was 
to many people a problem of deep interest to see whether the 
genius of Mr. Gladstone would prove equal to the trying task 
of leadership under circumstances of such peculiar difficulty. 
Tact, according to many, was the quality needed for the work 
— not genius. 

Some new men were coming up on both sides of the 
political field. Among these we have already mentioned Mr. 
Forster, who had taken a conspicuous part in the debates on 
the American Civil War. Mr. Forster was a man of con- 
siderable Parliamentary aptitude ; a debater, who though not 
pretending to eloquence, was argumentative, vigorous, and 
persuasive. He had practical knowledge of English politics 
and social affairs, and was thoroughly representative of a very 
solid body of English public opinion. In the House of Lords 
the Duke of Argyll was beginning to take a prominent and 
even a leading place. The Duke of Argyll would have passed 
as a middle-aged man in ordinary life, but he was looked on 



CH. xx. THE NEW GOVERNMENT. 2W 

by many as a sort of boy in politics. He had, indeed, begun 
life very soon. At this time he was some forty-three years of 
age, and he had been a prominent public man for more than 
twenty years. The Duke of Argyll, then Marquis of Lome, 
was only nineteen years old when he wrote a pamphlet called 
* Advice to the Peers.' A little later he engaged in the 
famous struggle concerning the freedom of the Church of 
Scotland, which resulted in the great secession headed 
by Dr. Chalmers, and the foundation of the Free Church. 
He became Duke of Argyll on the death of his father in 
1847. He did battle in the House of Lords as he had done 
out of it. He distinguished himself by plunging almost 
instantaneously into the thick of debate. He very much 
astonished the staid and formal peers, who had been 
accustomed to discussion conducted in measured tones, and 
with awful show of deference to age and political landing. 
The Duke of Argyll spoke upon any and every subject with 
astonishing fluency, and without the slightest reverence for 
years and authority. The general impression of the House 
of Lords for a long time was that youthful audacity, and 
nothing else, was the chief characteristic of the Duke of Argyll ; 
and for a long time the Duke of Argyll did a good deal to 
support that impression. After a while he began to show 
that there was more in him than self-confidence. The House 
of Lords found that he really knew a good deal, and had a 
wonderfully clear head, and they learned to endure hia 
dogmatic and professorial ways ; but he never grew to be 
popular amongst them. His style was far too self-assured ; 
his faith in his own superiority to everybody else was too 
evident to allow of his having many enthusiastic admirers. 
He soon, however, got into high office. With his rank, his 
talents, and his energy, such a thing was inevitable. He 
joined the Government of Lord Aberdeen in 1852 as Lord 
Privy Seal, holding an office of dignity, but no special duties, 
the occupant of which has only to give his assistance in 
council and general debate. He was afterwards Postmaster- 
General for two or three years. Under Lord Palmerston, in 
1859, he became Lord Privy Seal again, and he retained that 
office in the Cabinet of Lord Eussell. 

There were some rising men on the Tory side. Sir Hugh 
Cairns, afterwards Lord Chancellor and a peer, had fought his 
way by sheer talent and energy into the front rank of Opposi- 
tion. A lawyer from Belfast, and the son of middle-class 



28o A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. XX. 

parents, he had risen into celebrity and influence while yet he 
was in the very prime of life. He was a lawyer whose know- 
ledge of his own craft might fairly be called profound. He 
was one of the most effective debaters in Parliament. His 
resources of telling argument were almost inexhaustible, and 
his training at the bar gave him the faculty of making the 
best at the shortest notice of all the facts he was able to bring 
to bear on any question of controversy. He showed more than 
once that he was capable of pouring out an animated and even 
a passionate invective. An orator in the highest sense he 
certainly was not. No gleam of imagination softened or 
brightened his lithe and nervous logic. No deep feeling ani- 
mated and inspired it. His speeches were arguments not 
eloquence ; instruments not literature. But he was on the 
whole the greatest political lawyer since Lyndhurst ; and he 
was probably a sounder lawyer than Lyndhurst. He had 
above all things skill and discretion. Sir Stafford Northcote 
was a man of ability, who had an excellent financial training 
under no less a teacher than Mr. Gladstone himself. But Sir 
Stafford Northcote, although a fluent speaker, was not a 
great debater, and moreover he had but little of the genuine 
Tory in him. He was a man of far too modern a spirit and 
training to be a genuine Tory. He was not one whit more 
Conservative than most of the Whigs. Mr. Gathorne Hardy, 
afterwards Lord Cranbrook, was a man of ingrained Tory 
instincts rather than convictions. He was a powerful speaker 
of the rattling declamatory kind ; fluent as the sand in an hour- 
glass is fluent ; stirring as the roll of a drum is stirring ; 
sometimes dry as the sand and empty as the drum. A man 
of far higher ability and of really great promise was Lord 
Bobert Cecil, afterwards Lord Cranborne, and now Marquis of 
Salisbury. Lord Bobert Cecil was at this time the ablest scion 
of noble Toryism in the House of Commons. He was younger 
than Lord Stanley, and he had not Lord Stanley's solidity, 
caution, or political information. But he had more originality ; 
he had brilliant ideas ; he was ready in debate ; and he had a 
positive genius for saying bitter things in the bitterest tone. 
The younger son of a great peer, he had at one time no 
apparent chance of succeeding to the title and the estates. 
He had accepted honourable poverty, and was glad to help out 
his means by the use of his very clever pen. He wrote in 
several publications, it was said ; especially in the Quarterly 
Eeview, the time-honoured and somewhat time-worn organ 



CH. xx. THE NEW GOVERNMENT. 281 

of Toryism ; and after a while certain political articles in the 
Quarterly came to be identified with his name. He was an 
ultra- Tory ; a Tory on principle, who would hear of no com- 
promise. One great object of his political writings appeared 
to be to denounce Mr. Disraeli, his titular leader, and to warn 
the party agamst him. For a long time he was disliked by 
most persons in the House of Commons. His gestures were 
ungainly ; his voice was singularly unmusical and harsh ; and 
the extraordinary and wanton bitterness of his tongue set the 
ordinary listeners agamst him. He seemed to take a positive 
delight in being gratuitously offensive. Lord Eobert Cecil, 
therefore,although a genuine Tory, or perhaps because he was a 
genuine Tory, could not as yet be looked upon as a man likely 
to render great service to his party. He was just as likely to 
turn agamst them at some moment of political importance. 
He would not fall in with the discipline of the party ; he 
would not subject his opinions or his caprices to its supposed 
interests. Some men on his own side of the House disliked 
him. Many feared him ; some few admired him ; no one 
regarded him as a trustworthy party man. 

Lord Eussell's Government had hardly come into power 
before they found that some troublesome business awaited them, 
and that the trouble as usual had arisen in a wholly unthought- 
of quarter. For some weeks there was hardly anything talked 
of, we might almost say hardly anything thought of, in England, 
but the story of the rebellion that had taken place in the island 
of Jamaica, and the manner in which it had been suppressed 
and punished. The first story came from English officers and 
soldiers who had themselves helped to crush or to punish the 
supposed rebellion. All that the public here could gather 
from the first narratives that found their way into print was, 
that a negro insurrection had broken out in Jamaica, and that 
it had been promptly crushed ; but that its suppression seemed 
to have been accompanied by a very carnival of cruelty on the 
part of the soldiers and their volunteer auxiliaries. Some of 
the letters sent home reeked with blood. In these letters 
there was no question of contending with or suppressing an 
insurrection. The insurrection, such as it was, had been sup- 
pressed. The writers only gave a description of a sort of hunt- 
ing expedition among the negro inhabitants for the purpose of 
hanging and flogging. It also became known that a coloured 
member of the Jamaica House of Assembly, a man named 
George William Gordon, who was suspected of inciting the 



282 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. xx. 

rebellion, and had surrendered himself at Kingston, was put 
on board an English war vessel there, taken to Morant Bay, 
where martial law had been proclaimed, tried by a sort of drum- 
head court-martial, and instantly hanged. 

Such news naturally created a profound sensation in 
England. The Aborigines' Protection Society, the Anti- 
Slavery Society, and other philanthropic bodies, organised a 
deputation, immense in its numbers, and of great influence as 
regarded its composition, to wait on Mr. Cardwell, Secretary 
for the Colonies, at the Colonial Office, and urge on him the 
necessity of instituting a full inquiry and recalling Governor 
Eyre. The deputation was so numerous that it had to be 
received in a great public room, and indeed the whole scene 
was more like that presented by some large popular meeting 
than by a deputation to a minister. Mr. Cardwell suspended 
Mr. Eyre temporarily from his functions as Governor, and 
sent out a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the whole 
history of the rebellion and the repression, and to report to 
the Government. The Commission held a very long and 
careful inquiry. The history of the events in Jamaica 
formed a sad and shocking narrative. Jamaica had long 
been in a more or less disturbed condition ; at least it had 
long been liable to periodical fits of disturbance. What 
we may call the planter class still continued to look on the 
negroes as an inferior race hardly entitled to any legal 
rights. The negroes were naturally only too ready to 
listen to any denunciations of the planter class, and to put 
faith in any agitation which promised to secure them some 
property in the land. The negroes had undoubtedly some 
serious grievances. They constantly complained that they 
could not get justice administered to them when any dispute 
arose between white and black. The Government had found 
that there was some ground for complaints of this kind at the 
time when it was proposed by the Jamaica Bill to suspend the 
constitution of the island. In 1865, however, the common 
causes of dissatisfaction were freshly and further complicated 
by a dispute about what were called the ' back lands.' Lands 
belonging to some of the great estates in Jamaica had been 
allowed to run out of cultivation. They were so neglected by 
their owners that they were turning into mere bush. The 
quit-rents due on them to the Crown had not been paid for 
seven years. The negroes were told that if they paid the 
arrears of quit-rent they might cultivate these lands and enjoy 



ch. xx. THE NEW GOVERNMENT. 283 

tli em free of rent. It may be remarked that the tendency in 
Jamaica had almost always hitherto been for the Crown 
officials to take the part of the negroes, and for the Jamaica 
authorities to side with the local magnates. Trusting to the 
assurance given, some of the negroes paid the arrears of quit* 
rent, and brought the land into cultivation. The agent of one 
of the estates, however, reasserted the right of his principal, 
who had not been a consenting party to the arrangement, and 
he endeavoured to evict the negro occupiers of the land. The 
negroes resisted, and legal proceedings were instituted to turn 
them out. The legal proceedings were still pending when the 
events took place which gave occasion to so much controversy. 
On October 7, 1865, some disturbances took place on 
the occasion of a magisterial meeting at Morant Bay, a 
small town on the south-east corner of the island. The 
negroes appeared to be in an excited state, and many persons 
believed that an outbreak was at hand. An application 
was made to the Governor for military assistance. The 
Governor of Jamaica was Mr. Edward John Eyre, who had 
been a successful explorer in Central, West, and Southern 
Australia, had acted as resident magistrate and protector of 
aborigines in the region of the Lower Murray in Australia, 
and had afterwards been Lieutenant-Governor of New Zealand, 
of the Leeward Islands, and of other places. All Mr. Eyre's 
dealings with native races up to this time would seem to 
have earned for him the reputation of a just and humane 
man. The Governor despatched a small military force by sea 
to the scene of the expected disturbances. Warrants had been 
issued meanwhile by the Custos or chief magistrate of the 
parish in which Morant Bay is situated, for the arrest of some 
of the persons who had taken part in the previous disturbances. 
When the warrants were about to be put into execution, 
resistance by force was offered. The police were overpowered, 
and some were beaten, and others compelled to swear that 
they would not interfere with the negroes. On the 11th the 
negroes, armed with sticks, and the ' cutlasses ' used in the 
work of the sugar-cane fields, assembled in considerable 
numbers in the square of the Court House in Morant Bay. 
The magistrates were holding a meeting there. The mob 
made for the Court House ; the local volunteer force came to 
the help of the magistrates. The Biot Act was being read 
when some stones were thrown. The volunteers fired, and 
some negroes were seen to fall. Then the rioters attacked the 



284 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xx. 

Court House. The volunteers were few in number, and were 
easily overpowered ; the Court House was set on fire ; eighteen 
persons, the Custos among them, were killed, and about thirty 
were wounded ; and a sort of incoherent insurrection suddenly 
spread itself over the neighbourhood. The moment, however, 
that the soldiers sent by the Governor, at first only one 
hundred in number, arrived upon the scene of disturbance, 
the insurrection collapsed and vanished. There never was 
the slightest attempt made by the rioters to keep the field 
against the troops. The soldiers had not in a single instance 
to do any fighting. The only business left to them was to 
hunt out supposed rebels, and bring them before military 
tribunals. So evanescent was the whole movement that it is 
to this day a matter of dispute whether there was any rebellion 
at all, properly so called ; whether there was any organised 
attempt at insurrection ; or whether the disturbances were not 
the extemporaneous work of a discontented and turbulent 
mob, whose rush to rescue some of their friends expanded 
suddenly into an effort to wreak old grievances on the nearest 
representatives of authority. 

At this time Jamaica was ruled by the Governor and 
Council, and the House of Assembly. Among the members of 
the Assembly was George William Gordon. Gordon was a 
Baptist by religion, and had in him a good deal of the fanatical 
earnestness of the field-preacher. He was a vehement agitator 
and a devoted advocate of what he considered to be the rights 
of the negroes. He appears to have had a certain amount of 
eloquence. He was just the sort of man to make himsell a 
nuisance to white colonists and officials who wanted to have 
everything their own way. Gordon was in constant disputes 
with the authorities, and with Governor Eyre himself. He 
had been a magistrate, but was dismissed from the magistracy 
in consequence of the alleged violence of his language in 
making accusations against another justice. He had taken 
some part in getting up meetings of the coloured population ; 
he had made many appeals to the Colonial Office in London 
against this or that act on the part of the Governor or the 
Council, or both. He had been appointed churchwarden, but 
was declared disqualified for the office in consequence of his 
having become a ' Native Baptist ; ' and he had brought an 
action to recover what he held to be his rights. He had come 
to hold the position of champion of the rights and claims of 
the black man against the white. He was a sort of constitu- 



CH. xx. THE NEW GOVERNMENT. 285 

tional Opposition in himself. The Governor seems to have at 
once adopted the conclusion urged on him by others, that 
Gordon was at the bottom of the insurrectionary movement. 

On October 13, the Governor proclaimed the whole of the 
county of Surrey, with the exception of the city of Kingston, 
under martial law. Jamaica is divided into three counties ; 
Surrey covering the eastern and southern portion, including 
the region of the Blue Mountains, the towns of Port Antonio 
and Morant Bay, and the considerable city of Kingston, with 
its population of some thirty thousand. Middlesex comprehends 
the central part of the island, and contains Spanish Town, then 
the seat of Government. The western part of the island is the 
county of Cornwall. Mr. Gordon lived near Kingston, and had 
a place of business in the city ; and he seems to have been there 
attending to his business, as usual, during the days while the 
disturbances were going on. The Governor ordered a warrant 
to be issued for Gordon's arrest. When this fact became 
known to Gordon, he went to the house of the General in 
command of the forces at Kingston and gave himself up. 
The Governor had him put at once on board a war steamer, 
and conveyed to Morant Bay. Having given himself up in a 
place where martial law did not exist, where the ordinary 
courts were open, and where, therefore, he would have been 
tried with all the forms and safeguards of the civil law, he 
was purposely carried away to a place which had been put 
under martial law. Here an extraordinary sort of court- 
martial was sitting. It was composed of two young navy 
lieutenants and an ensign in one of hor Majesty's West India 
regiments. Gordon was hurried before this grotesque tribunal, 
charged with high treason, found guilty, and sentenced to 
death. The sentence was approved by the officer in command 
01 the troops sent to Morant Bay. It was then submitted to 
the Governor, and approved by him also. It was carried into 
effect without much delay. The day following Gordon's con- 
viction was Sunday, and it was not thought seemly to hang a 
man on the Sabbath. He was allowed, therefore, to live over 
that day. On the morning of Monday, October 23, Gordon 
was hanged. He bore his fate with great heroism, and wrote 
just before his death a letter to his wife, which is full of 
pathos in its simple and dignified manliness. He died pro- 
testing his innocence of any share in disloyal conspiracy or 
insurrectionary purpose. 

The whole of the proceedings connected with the trial of 



286 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, en. xx. 

Gordon were absolutely illegal from first to last. The act 
which conveyed Mr. Gordon from the protection of civil law 
to the authority of a drumhead court-martial was grossly 
illegal. The tribunal was constituted in curious defiance of 
law and precedent. It is contrary to all authority to form a 
court-martial by mixing together the officers of the two differ- 
ent services. It was an unauthorised tribunal, however, even 
if considered as only a military court-martial, or only a naval 
court-martial. The prisoner thus brought by unlawful means 
before an illegal tribunal was tried upon testimony taken in 
ludicrous opposition to all the rules of evidence. Such as the 
evidence was, however, compounded of scraps of the paltriest 
hearsay, and of things said when the prisoner was not present, 
it testified rather to the innocence than to the guilt of the 
prisoner. By such a court, on such evidence, Gordon was put 
to death. 

Meanwhile the carnival of repression was going on. For 
weeks the hangings, the floggings, the burnings of houses 
were kept up. The report of the Eoyal Commissioners 
stated that 439 persons were put to death, and that over 
six hundred, including many women, were flogged, some 
under circumstances of revolting cruelty. When the story 
reached England in clear and trustworthy form, an associa- 
tion called the Jamaica Committee was formed for the 
avowed purpose of seeing that justice was done. It comprised 
some of the most illustrious Englishmen. Men became 
members of that committee who had never taken part 
in public agitation of any kind before. Another association 
was founded, on the opposite side, for the purpose of sustain- 
ing Governor Eyre, and it must be owned that it too had 
great names. Mr. Mill may be said to have led the one side, 
and Mr. Carlyle the other. The natural bent of each man s 
genius and temper turned him to the side of the Jamaica 
negroes, or of the Jamaica Governor. Mr. Tennyson, Mr. 
Kingsley, Mr. Euskin, followed Mr. Carlyle ; we know now 
that Mr. Dickens was of the same way of thinking. Mr. 
Herbert Spencer, Professor Huxley, Mr. Goldwin Smith, 
were in agreement with Mr. Mill. The case on either side 
may be briefly stated. The more reasonable of those who 
supported Mr. Eyre contended that at a terrible crisis Mr. 
Eyre was confronted with the fearful possibility of a negro 
insurrection, and that he did the best he could. To this 
the opposite party answered that in fact the insurrection, 



CH. xx. THE NEW GOVERNMENT. 287 

supposing it to have been an insurrection, was all over 
before the floggings, the hangings, and the burnings set in. 
Not merely were the troops masters of the field, but there 
was no armed enemy anywhere to be seen in the field or out 
of it. They contended that men are not warranted in inflict- 
ing wholesale and hideous punishments merely in order to 
strike such terror as may prevent the possibility of any future 
disturbance. 

The Eeport of the Commissioners was made in April 
1866. It declared in substance that the disturbances had 
their immediate origin in a planned resistance to authority, 
arising partly out of a desire to obtain the land free of rent, 
and partly out of the want of confidence felt by the labouring 
class in the tribunals by which most of the disputes affecting 
their interests were decided; that the disturbance spread 
rapidly, and that Mr. Eyre deserved praise for the skill and 
vigour with which he had stopped it in the beginning ; but 
that martial law was kept in force too long ; that the punish- 
ments inflicted were excessive ; that the punishment of death 
was unnecessarily frequent ; that the floggings were barbarous, 
and the burnings wanton and cruel; that although it was 
probable that Gordon, by his writings and speeches, had done 
much to bring about excitement and discontent, and thus 
rendered insurrection possible, yet there was no sufficient 
proof of his complicity in the outbreak, or in any organised 
conspiracy against the Government ; and, indeed, that there 
was no wide-spread conspiracy of any kind. Of course this 
finished Mr. Eyre's career as a Colonial Governor. A new 
Governor, Sir J. P. Grant, was sent out to Jamaica, and a new 
Constitution was given to the island. The Jamaica Committee 
prosecuted Mr. Eyre and some of his subordinates, but the 
bills of indictment were always thrown out by the grand jury. 
After many discussions in Parliament, the Government in 
1872 — once again a Liberal Government — decided on paying 
Mr. Eyre the expenses to which he had been put in defending 
himself against the various prosecutions ; and the House of 
Commons, after a long debate, agreed to the vote by a large 
majority. On the whole there was not any failure of justice. 
A career full of bright promise was cut short for Mr. Eyre, 
and for some of his subordinates as well ; and no one accused 
Mr. Eyre personally of anything worse than a fury of mis- 
taken zeal. The deeds which were done by his authority, or 
to which, when they were done, he gave his authority's sane- 



288 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. XX 

tion, were branded with such infamy that it is almost impossible 
such things could ever be done again in England's name. 
Even those who excused under the circumstances the men by 
whom the deeds were done, had seldom a word to say in defence 
of the acts themselves. 

The Queen opened the new Parliament in person. She 
then performed the ceremony for the first time since the 
death of the Prince Consort. The speech from the throne 
contained a paragraph which announced that her Majesty 
had directed that information should be procured in refer- 
ence to the right of voting in the election of members of 
Parliament, and that when the information was complete, 
' the attention of Parliament will be called to the result thus 
obtained with a view to such improvements in the law T s which 
regulate the right of voting in the election of members of 
the House of Commons as may tend to strengthen our free 
institutions, and conduce to the public welfare.' Some an- 
nouncement on the subject of Eeform was expected by every- 
one. The only surprise felt was perhaps at the cautious and 
limited way in which the proposed measure was indicated in the 
royal speech. While Radicals generally insisted that the 
strength of the old Whig party had been successfully exerted to 
compel a compromise and keep Mr. Gladstone down, most of the 
Tories would have it that Mr. G ladstone now had got it all his 
own way, and that the cautious vagueness of the Queen's Speech 
would only prove to be the prelude to very decisive and alarm- 
ing changes in the Constitution. Not since the introduction 
by Lord John Russell of the measure which became law in 
1832, had a Reform Bill been expected in England with so 
much curiosity, with so much alarm, and with so much dis- 
position to a foregone conclusion of disappointment. On 
March 12 Mr. Gladstone introduced the bill. His speech was 
eloquent; but the House of Commons was not stirred. It 
was evident at once that the proposed measure was only a 
compromise of the most unattractive kind. The bill proposed 
to reduce the county franchise from fifty pounds to fourteen 
pounds, and the borough franchise from ten to seven pounds. 
The borough franchise of course was still the central question 
in any reform measure ; and this was to be reduced by three 
pounds. 

The man who could be enthusiastic over such a reform 
must have been a person whose enthusiasm was scarcely 
worth arousing. The peculiarity of the situation was, 



ch. xx, THE NEW GOVERNMENT. 289 

that without a genuine popular enthusiasm nothing could 
be done. The House of Commons as a whole did not 
want reform. All the Conservatives were of course openly 
and consistently opposed to reform; not a few of the pro- 
fessing Liberals secretly detested it. Only a small number of 
men in the House were genuine in their anxiety for immediate 
change; and of these the majority were too earnest and 
extreme to care for a reform which only meant a reduction of 
the borough franchise from ten pounds to seven pounds. It 
seemed a ridiculous anti-climax, after all the indignant elo- 
quence about ' unenfranchised millions,' to come down to a 
scheme for enfranchising a few hundreds here and there. 
Those who believed in the sincerity and high purpose of 
Lord Eussell and Mr. Gladstone, and who therefore assumed 
that if they said this was all they could do there was nothing 
else to be done — these supported the bill. Mr. Bright sup- 
ported it ; somewhat coldly at first, but afterwards, when 
warmed by the glow of debate and of opposition, with all his 
wonted power. It was evident, however, that he was support- 
ing Lord Eussell and Mr. Gladstone rather than their Eeform 
Bill. Mr. Mill supported the bill, partly no doubt for the 
same reason, and partly because it had the support of Mr. 
Bright. But it would have been hard to find anyone who 
said that he really cared much about the measure itself, or that 
it was the sort of thing he would have proposed if he had his 
way. The Conservatives as a man opposed the measure ; and 
they had allies. Day after day saw new secessions of em- 
boldened Whigs and half-hearted Liberals. The Ministerial 
side of the House was fast becoming demoralised. The Liberal 
party was breaking up into mutinous camps and unmanageable 
coteries. 

Mr. Eobert Lowe was the hero of the Opposition that 
fought against the bill. His attacks on the Government had, 
of course, all the more piquancy that they came from a Liberal, 
and one who had held office in two Liberal administrations. 
The Tory benches shouted and screamed with delight, as in 
speech after speech of admirable freshness and vigour Mr. 
Lowe poured his scathing sarcasms in upon the bill and its 
authors. Even their own leader and champion, Mr. Disraeli, 
became of comparatively small account with the Tories when 
they heard Mr. Lowe's invectives against their enemies. 
Much of Mr. Lowe's success was undoubtedly due to the 
manner in which he hit the tone and temper of the Conser- 
13 



290 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xx. 

vatives and of the disaffected Whigs. Applause and admira- 
tion are contagious in the House of Commons. When a great 
number of voices join in cheers and in praise, other voices are 
caught by the attraction, and cheer and praise out of the sheer 
infection of sympathy. It is needless to say that the applause 
reacts upon the orator. The more he feels that the House 
admires him, the more likely he is to make himself worthy 
of the admiration. The occasion told on Mr. Lowe. His 
form seemed, metaphorically at least, to grow greater and 
grander on that scene, as the enthusiasm of his admirers 
waxed and heated. Certainly he never after that time made 
any great mark by his speeches, or won back any of the fame 
as an orator which was his during that short and to him 
splendid period. But the speeches themselves were masterly 
as mere literary productions. Not many men could have 
fewer physical qualifications for success in oratory than Mr. 
Lowe. He had an awkward and ungainly presence ; his 
gestures were angular and ungraceful ; his voice was harsh 
and rasping ; his articulation was so imperfect that he became 
now and then almost unintelligible ; his sight was so short 
that when he had to read a passage or extract of any kind, 
he could only puzzle over its contents in a painful and blunder- 
ing way, even with the paper held up close to his eyes ; and 
his memory was not good enough to allow him to quote any- 
thing without the help of documents. How, it may be asked 
in wonder, was such a speaker as this to contend in eloquence 
with the torrent-like fluency, the splendid diction, the silver- 
trumpet voice of Gladstone ; or with the thrilling vibrations 
of Bright's noble eloquence, now penetrating in its pathos, 
and now irresistible in its humour? Even those who well 
remember these great debates may ask themselves in un- 
satisfied wonder the same question now. It is certain that 
Mr. Lowe has not the most distant claim to be ranked as an 
orator with Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Bright. Yet it is equally 
certain that he did for that season stand up against each of 
them, against them both ; against them both at their very 
best ; and that he held his own. 

Mr. Disraeli was thrown completely into the shade. Mr. 
Disraeli was not, it is said, much put out by this. He listened 
quietly, perhaps even contemptuously, looking upon the whole 
episode as one destined to pass quickly away. He did not 
believe that Mr. Lowe was likely to be a peer of Mr. Gladstone 
or Mr. Bright — or of himself— in debate. But for the time 



dH. xx. THE NEW GOVERNMENT, 291 

Mr. Lowe was the master-spirit of the Opposition to the 
Reform Bill. In sparkling sentences, full of classical allusion 
and of illustrations drawn from all mamier of literatures, he 
denounced and satirised demagogues, democratic governments, 
and every influence that tended to bring about any political 
condition which allowed of an ommous comparison with 
something in Athenian history. The Conservatives made a 
hero, and even an idol, of him. Shrewd old members of the 
party, who ought to have known better, were heard to declare 
that he was not only the greatest orator, but even the greatest 
statesman, of the day. In truth, Mr. Lowe was neither orator 
nor statesman. He had some of the gifts which are needed 
to make a man an orator, but hardly any of those which con- 
stitute a statesman. He was a literary man and a scholar, 
who had a happy knack of saying bitter things in an epigram- 
matic way ; he really hated the Eeform Bill, towards which 
Mr. Disraeli probably felt no emotion whatever, and he started 
into prominence as an anti-reformer just at the right moment 
to suit the Conservatives and embarrass and dismay the 
Liberal party. He was greatly detested for a time amongst 
the working classes, for whose benefit the measure was chiefly 
introduced. He not only spoke out with cynical frankness 
his own opinion of the merits and morals of the people * who 
live in these small houses,' but he implied that all the other 
members of the House held the same opinion, if they would 
only venture to give it a tongue. He was once or twice 
mobbed in the streets ; he was strongly disliked and dreaded 
for the hour by the Liberals ; he was the most prominent 
figure on the stage during these weeks of excitement ; and no 
doubt he was perfectly happy. 

The debates on the bill brought out some speeches which 
have not been surpassed in the Parliamentary history of our 
time. Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone were at their very best. 
Mr. Bright likened the formation of the little band of mal- 
contents to the doings of David in the cave of Adullam when he 
called about him ' every one that was in distress and every one 
that was discontented,' and became a captain over them. The 
allusion told upon the House with instant effect, for many had 
suspected and some had said that if Mr. Lowe had been more 
carefully conciliated by the Prime Minister at the time of 
his Government's formation, there might have been no such 
acrimonious opposition to the bill. The little third party 
were at once christened the Adullamites, and the name still 



292 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xx. 

survives, and is likely long to survive its old political history. 
Mr. Gladstone's speech, with which the great debate on the 
second reading concluded, was aflame with impassioned elo- 
quence. This speech was concluded on the morning of April 28. 
The debate which it brought to a close had been carried 
on for eight nights. The House of Commons was wrought up 
to a pitch of the most intense excitement when the division 
came to be taken. The closing passages of Mr. Gladstone's 
speech had shown clearly enough that he did not expect much 
of a triumph for the Government. The House was crowded 
to excess. The numbers voting were large beyond almost any 
other previous instance. There were for the second reading 
of the bill 318 : there were against it 313. The second read- 
ing was carried by a majority of only five. The wild cheers 
of the Conservatives and the Adullamites showed that the bill 
was doomed. The question now was not whether the measure 
would be a failure, but only when the failure would have to 
be confessed. The time for the confession soon came. The 
opponents of the reform scheme kept pouring in amendments. 
These came chiefly from the Ministerial side of the House. 
Lord Dunkellin, usually a supporter of the Government, 
moved an amendment the effect of which would be to make 
the franchise a little higher than the Government proposed to 
fix it. Lord Dunkellin carried his amendment. Lord Eussell 
and Mr. Gladstone accepted the situation, and resigned office. 
The defeat of the bill and the resignation of the Ministry 
brought the political career of Lord Eussell to a close. He 
took advantage of the occasion soon after to make a formal 
announcement that he handed over the task of leading the 
Liberal party to Mr. Gladstone. He appeared indeed in 
public life on several occasions after his resignation of office. 
He took part sometimes in the debates of the House of Lords ; 
he even once or twice introduced measures there, and en- 
deavoured to get them passed. Lord Eussell' s career, how- 
ever, was practically at an end. It had been a long and an 
interesting career. It was begun amid splendid chances. 
Lord John Eussell was born in the very purple of politics ; he 
was cradled and nursed among statesmen and orators ; the 
fervid breath of young liberty fanned his boyhood ; his tutors, 
friends, companions, were the master-spirits who rule the 
fortunes of nations; he had the ministerial benches for a 
training ground, and had a seat in the Administration at his 
disposal when another young man might have been glad of a 



CH. XX. THE NEW GOVERNMENT. 293 

seat in an opera box. He must have been brought into more 
or less intimate association with all the men and women worth 
knowing in Europe since the early part of the century. Lord 
John Eussell had tastes for literature, for art, for philosophy, 
for history, for politics, and his aBstheticism had the advantage 
that it made him seek the society and appreciate the worth of 
men of genius and letters. Thus he never remained a mere 
politician like Palmerston. His public career suggests a 
strange series of contradictions, or paradoxes. In Ireland he 
was long known rather as the author of the Ecclesiastical 
Titles Bill than as the early friend of Catholic Emancipation ; 
in England as the parent of petty and abortive Eeform Bills, 
lather than as the promoter of one great Beform Bill. Abroad 
and at home he came to be thought of as the Minister who 
disappointed Denmark and abandoned Poland, rather than 
as the earnest friend and faithful champion of oppressed 
nationalities. No statesman could be a more sincere and 
thorough opponent of slavery in all its forms and works ; and 
yet in the mind of the American people, Lord Bussell's name 
was for a long time associated with the idea of a scarcely- 
concealed support of the slaveholders' rebellion. Much of 
this curious contrast, this seeming inconsistency, is due to the 
fact that for the greater part of his public life Lord Bussell's 
career was a mere course of see-saw between office and oppo- 
sition. The sort of superstition that long prevailed in our 
political affairs limited the higher offices of statesmanship to 
two or three conventionally acceptable men on either side. If 
not Sir Bobert Peel then it must be Lord John Bussell ; if it 
was not Lord Derby it must be Lord Palmerston. Therefore 
if the business of government was to go on at all, a statesman 
must take office now and then with men whom he could not 
mould wholly to his purpose, and must act in seeming sym- 
pathy with principles and measures which he would himself 
have little cared to originate. The personal life of Lord 
Bussell was consistent all through, He began as a Beformer; 
he ended as a Beformer. 



294 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxi. 

CHAPTEE XXL 

KEFOEM. 

The Queen, of course, sent for Lord Derby. He had no 
personal desire to enter office once again ; lie had no inclina- 
tion for official responsibilities. He was not very fond of 
work, even when younger and stronger, and the habitual 
indolence of his character had naturally grown with years, 
and just now with infirmities. It was generally understood 
that he would only consent to be the Prime Minister of an 
interval, and that whenever, with convenience to the interests 
of the State, some other hand could be entrusted with power, 
he would expect to be released from the trouble of official life. 
The prospect for a Conservative Ministry was not inviting. 
Lord Derby had hoped to be able to weld together a sort of 
coalition Ministry, which should to a certain extent represent 
both sides of the House. Accordingly, he at once invited the 
leading members of the Adullamite party to accept places in 
his Administration. He was met by disappointment. The 
Adullamite chiefs agreed to decline all such co-operation. 
When it was known that Mr. Lowe would not take office under 
Lord Derby, nobody cared what became of the other denizens 
of the Cave. Some of them were men of great territorial 
influence ; some were men of long standing in Parliament. 
But they were absolutely unnoticed now that the crisis was 
over. They might take office or let it alone ; the public at 
large were absolutely indifferent on the subject. 

The session had advanced far towards its usual time of 
closing, when Lord Derby completed the arrangements for 
his Administration. Mr. Disraeli, of course, became Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. 
Lord Stanley was Foreign Secretary. Lord Cranborne, for- 
merly Lord Eobert Cecil, was entrusted with the care of 
India ; Lord Carnarvon undertook the Colonies ; General Peel 
became War Minister ; Sir Stafford Northcote was President 
of the Board of Trade ; and Mr. Walpole took on himself the 
management of the Home Office, little knowing what a 
troublous business he had brought upon his shoulders. Sir 
John Pakington boldly assumed the control of the Admiralty. 
On July 9 Lord Derby was able to announce to the Peers that 
he had put together his house of cards. 



CH. xxi. REFORM. 295 

The new Ministry had hardly taken their places when 
a perfect storm of agitation broke out all over the country. 
The Conservatives and the Adullamites had both asserted 
that the working people in general were indifferent about the 
franchise ; and a number of organisations now sprang into 
existence, having for their object to prove to the world that 
no such apathy prevailed. Eeform Leagues and Eeform 
Unions started up as if out of the ground. Public meetings 
of vast dimensions began to be held day after day for the 
purpose of testifying to the strength of the desire for Eeform. 
The most noteworthy of these was the famous Hyde Park 
meeting. The Eeformers of the metropolis determined to 
hold a monster meeting in the Park. The authorities took 
the very unwise course of determining to prohibit it, and a 
proclamation or official notice was issued to that effect. The 
Eeformers were acting under the advice of Mr. Edmond 
Beales, president of the Eeform League, a barrister of some 
standing, and a man of character and considerable ability. 
Mr. Beales was of opinion that the authorities had no legal 
power to prevent the meeting ; and of course it need hardly 
be said that a Commissioner of Police, or even a Home Secre- 
tary, is not qualified to make anything legal or illegal by 
simply proclaiming it so. The London Eeformers, therefore, 
determined to try their right with the authorities. On July 
23, a number of processions, marching with bands and banners, 
set out from different parts of London and made for Hyde 
Park. The authorities had posted notices announcing that 
the gates of the Park would be closed at five o'clock that even- 
ing. When the first of the processions arrived at the Park 
the gates were closed, and a line of policemen was drawn 
outside. The president of the Eeform League, Mr. Beales, 
and some other prominent Eeformers, came up in a carriage, 
alighted, and endeavoured to enter the Park. They were 
refused admittance. They asked for the authority by which 
they were refused ; and they were told it was the authority of 
the Commissioner of Police. They then quietly re-entered 
the carriage. It was their intention first to assert their right, 
and then, being refused, to try it in the regular and legal 
way. They went to Trafalgar Square, followed by a large 
crowd, and there a meeting was extemporised, at which 
resolutions were passed demanding the extension of the suf- 
irage, and thanking Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Bright, and other 
men who had striven to obtain it. The speaking was short ; 



296 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxi. 

it was not physically possible to speak with any effect to so 
large an assemblage. Then that part of the demonstration 
came quietly to an end. 

Meanwhile, however, a different scene had been going on 
at Hyde Park. A large and motley crowd had hung about 
the gates and railings. The crowd was composed partly of 
genuine Eeformers, partly of mere sight-seers and curiosity- 
mongers, partly of mischievous boys, and to no inconsiderable 
extent of ordinary London roughs. Not a few of all sections, 
perhaps, were a little disappointed that things had gone so 
quietly off. The mere mass of people pressed and pressing 
round the railings would almost in any case have somewhat 
seriously threatened their security and tried their strength. 
The rails began to give way. There was a simultaneous im- 
pulsive rush, and some yards of railing were down, and men 
in scores were tumbling, and floundering, and rushing over 
them. The example was followed along Park Lane, and in a 
moment half a mile of iron railing was lying on the grass, 
and a tumultuous and delighted mob were swarming over the 
Park. The news ran wildly through the town. Some thought 
it a revolt ; others were of opinion that it was a revolution. 
The first day of liberty was proclaimed here — the breaking 
loose of anarchy was shrieked at there. The mob capered 
and jumped over the sward for half the night through. 
Flower-beds and shrubs suffered a good deal, not so much 
from wanton destruction as from the pure boisterousness 
which came of an unexpected opportunity for horse-play. 
There were a good many little encounters with the police ; 
stones were thrown on the one side and truncheons used on 
the other pretty freely ; a detachment of foot guards was kept 
near the spot in readiness, but their services were not required. 
Indeed, the mob good-humouredly cheered the soldiers when- 
ever they caught sight of them. A few heads were broken 
on both sides, and a few prisoners were made by the police ; 
but there was no revolution, no revolt, no serious riot even, 
and no intention in the mind of any responsible person that 
there should be a riot. Mr. Disraeli that night declared in 
the House of Commons — half probably in jest, half certainly 
in earnest — that he was not quite sure whether he had still a 
house to go to. He found his house yet standing, and firmly 
roofed, when he returned home that night. London slept 
feverishly, and awoke next day to find things going on very 
much as before. Crowds hastened, half in amusement, haif 



ch. xxi. REFORM. 297 

in fear, to look upon the scene of the previous evening's tur- 
moil. There were the railings down sure enough ; and in the 
Park was still a large idle crowd, partly of harmless sight- 
seers, partly of roughs, with a considerable body of police 
keeping order. But there was no popular rising ; and London 
began once more to eat its meals in peace. 

Nothing can well be more certain than the fact that the 
Hyde Park riot, as it was called, convinced her Majesty's 
Ministers of the necessity of an immediate adoption of the 
reform principle. The Government took the Hyde Park riot 
with portentous gravity. Mr. Beales and some of his colleagues 
waited upon the Home Secretary next c'ay, for the purpose of 
advising him to withdraw the military and police from the 
Park, and leave it in the custody of the Beformers. Mr. 
Beales gravely lectured the Government for what they had 
done, and declared, as was undoubtedly the fact, that the 
foolish conduct of the Administration had been the original 
cause of all the disturbance. The Home Secretary, Mr. 
Walpole, a gentle and kindly man, had lost his head in the 
excitement of the hour. He mentally saw himself charged 
with the responsibility of civil strife and bloodshed. He was 
melted out of all self-command by the kindly bearing of Mr. 
Beales and the Beformers, and when they assured him that 
they were only anxious to help him to keep order, he fairly 
broke down and wept. He expressed himself with meek 
gratitude for their promised co-operation, and agreed to almost 
anything they could suggest. It was understood that the right 
of meeting in Hyde Park was left to be tested in some more 
satisfactory way at a future day, and the leaders of the Beform 
League took their departure undoubted masters of the situa- 
tion. 

All through the autumn and winter great meetings were 
held in the great towns and cities to promote the cause of 
reform. A most significant feature of these demonstrations 
was the part taken by the organised trades associations of 
working men. They were great in numbers, and most im- 
posing in their silent united strength. They had grown into 
all that discipline and that power unpatronised by any manner 
of authority ; unrecognised by the law, unless indeed where 
the law occasionally went out of its way to try to prevent or 
thwart the aims of their organisation. They had now grown 
to such strength that law and authority must see to make 
terms with them. The capitalist and all who share hia 
13* 



298 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxi. 

immediate interests ; the employers, the rich of every kind, the 
aristocratic, the self-appointed public instructors, had all been 
against them ; and they had nevertheless gone deliberately 
and stubbornly their own way. Sometimes they, or the cause 
they represented, had prevailed ; often they and it had been 
defeated ; but they had never acknowledged a defeat in prin- 
ciple, and they had kept on their own course undismayed, and, 
as many would have put it, unconvinced and unreconciled. 

While England was thus occupied, stirring events were 
taking place elsewhere. In the interval between the resignation 
of Lord Eussell and the completion of Lord Derby's minis- 
try, Austria and Prussia had gone to war, and the leadership of 
Germany had been decisively won by Prussia. Venetia had 
been added to Italy, Prussia's ally in the war, and Austria had 
been excluded from any share in German affairs. English 
public instructors were for the most part completely agreed 
about the utter incapacity of the Prussians for the business of 
war, and the complete overthrow of Austria came with the 
shock of a bewildering surprise upon the great mass of our 
people. 

Just before the adjournment of Parliament for the recess, 
a great work of peace was accomplished. This was the com- 
pletion of the Atlantic cable. On the evening of July 27, 1866, 
the cable was laid between Europe and America. Next day 
Lord Stanley, as Foreign Minister, was informed'that perfect 
communication existed between England and the United States 
by means of a thread of wire that lay beneath the Atlantic. 
Words of friendly congratulation and greeting were inter- 
changed between the Queen and the President of the United 
States. Ten years all but a month or two had gone by since 
Mr. Cyrus W. Field, the American promoter of the Atlantic 
telegraph project, had first tried to inspire cool and calculating 
men in London, Liverpool, and Manchester with some faith in 
his project. It was not he who first thought of doing the 
thing, but it was he who first made up his mind that it could 
be done and showed the world how to do it, and did it in the 
end. The history of human invention has not a more inspiriting 
example of patience living down discouragement, and persever- 
ance triumphing over defeat. The first attempt to lay the cable 
was made in 1857 ; but the vessels engaged in the expedition 
had only got about three hundred miles from the west coast 
of Ireland when the cable broke, and the effort had to be given 
up for that year. Next year the enterprise was renewed and 



ch. xxi, REFORM. 



299 



failed again. Another effort, however, was made that summer. 
The cable was actually laid. It did for a few days unite Europe 
and America. Messages of congratulationpassed along between 
the Queen and the President of the United States. Suddenly, 
however, the signals became faint ; the messages grew inar- 
ticulate, and before long the power of communication ceased 
altogether. The cable became a mere cable again ; the wire 
that spoke with such a miraculous eloquence had become silent. 
The construction of the cable had proved to be defective, and 
a new principle had to be devised by science. Yet something 
definite had been accomplished. It had been shown that a 
cable could be stretched and maintained under the ocean more 
than two miles deep and two thousand miles across. Another 
attempt was made in 1865, but it proved again a failure, and 
the shivered cable had to be left for the time in the bed of the 
Atlantic. At last, in 1866, the feat was accomplished, and 
the Atlantic telegraph was added to the realities of life. 

The autumn and winter of agitation passed away, and the 
time was at hand when the new Ministry must meet a new 
session of Parliament. The country looked with keen interest, 
and also with a certain amused curiosity, to see what the 
Government would do with Eeform in the session of 1867. 
Parliament opened on February 5. The Speech from the 
Throne alluded, as everyone had expected that it would, to the 
subject of Eeform. * Your attention,' so ran the words of the 
speech, ' will again be called to the state of the representation 
of the people in Parliament ;' and then the hope was expressed 
that ' Your deliberations, conducted in a spirit of moderation 
and mutual forbearance, may lead to the adoption of measures 
which, without unduly disturbing the balance of political power, 
shall freely extend the elective franchise.' The hand of Mr. 
Disraeli, people said, was to be seen clearly enough in these 
vague and ambiguous phrases. How, it was asked, can the 
franchise be freely extended, in the Eeformer's sense, without 
disturbing the balance of political power unduly, in Mr. 
Disraeli's sense ? More and more the conviction spread that 
Mr. Disraeli would only try to palm off some worthless measure 
on the House of Commons, and, by the help of the insincere 
Eeformers and Adullamites, endeavour to induce the majority 
to accept it. People had little idea, however, of the flexibility 
the Government were soon to display. The history of Parlia- 
ment in our modern days, or indeed in any days that we know 
much of, has nothing like the proceedings of that extraordinary 
session. 



300 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxi. 

On February 11 Mr. Disraeli announced that the Govern* 
ment had made up their minds to proceed ' by way of resolu- 
tion.' The great difficulty, he explained, in the way of passing 
a Eeform Bill was that the two great political parties could not 
be got to agree beforehand on any principles by which to con- 
struct a measure. * Let us then, before we go to work at the 
construction of a Eeform Bill this time, agree among our- 
selves as to what sort of a measure we want. The rest will be 
easy.' He therefore announced his intention to put into the 
Parliamentary cauldron a handful of resolutions, out of which, 
when they had been allowed to simmer, would miraculously 
arise the majestic shape of a good Eeform Bill made perfect. 
The resolutions which Mr. Disraeli proposed to submit to 
the House were for the most part sufficiently absurd. Some 
of them were platitudes which it could not be worth anyone's 
while to take the trouble of affirming by formal resolution. 
But most of the resolutions embodied propositions such as no 
Prime Minister could possibly have expected the House to 
agree on without violent struggles, determined resistance, and 
eager divisions. The Liberal party, especially that section of 
it which acknowledged the authority of Mr. Bright, would 
have had to be beaten to its knees before it would consent to 
accept some of these devices. Mr. Disraeli seems to have 
learned almost at once, from the demeanour of the House, 
that it would be hopeless to press his resolutions. On 
February 25 he quietly substituted for them a sort of 
Eeform Bill which he announced that the Government 
intended to introduce. The occupation franchise in boroughs 
was to be reduced to six pounds, and in counties to twenty 
pounds, in each case the qualification to be based on rating ; 
that is, the right of a man to vote was to be made 
dependent on the arrangements by his local vestry or other 
rate-imposing body. There were to be all manner of * fancy 
franchises.' There seemed something unintelligible, or at 
least mysterious, about the manner in which this bill was 
introduced. It was to all appearance not based upon the 
resolutions; certainly it made no reference to some of the 
more important of their provisions. It never had any sub- 
stantial existence. The House of Commons received with 
contemptuous indifference Mr. Disraeli's explanation of its 
contents, and the very next day Mr. Disraeli announced that 
the Government had determined to withdraw it, to give up at 
the same time the whole plan of proceeding by resolution. 



CH. xxi. REFORM. 301 

and to introduce a real and substantial Reform Bill in a few 
days. 

Parliament and the public were amazed at these sudden 
changes. The whole thing seemed turning into burlesque. 
The session had seen only a few days, and here already was a 
third variation in the shape of the Government's reform pro- 
ject. To increase the confusion and scandal it was announced 
three or four days after that three leading members of the 
Cabinet — General Peel, Lord Carnarvon, and Lord Cranborne 
— had resigned. The whole story at last came out. The 
revelation was due to the 'magnificent indiscretion' of Sir 
John Pakington, whose lucky incapacity to keep a secret has 
curiously enriched one chapter of the political history of his 
time. In consequence of the necessary reconstruction of the 
Cabinet, Sir John Pakington was transferred from the 
Admiralty to the War Office, and had to go down to his con- 
stituents of Droitwich for re-election. In the fulness of his 
heart he told a story which set all England laughing. The 
Government, it would appear, started with two distinct 
Reform Bills, one more comprehensive and liberal, as they 
considered, than the other. The latter was kept ready only 
as a last resource, in case the first should meet with a chilling 
reception from the Conservatism of the House of Commons. 
In that emergency they proposed to be ready to produce their 
less comprehensive scheme. The more liberal measure was 
to have been strictly based on the resolutions. The Cabinet 
met on Saturday, February 23, and then, as Sir John 
Pakington said, he and others were under the impression that 
they had come to a perfect understanding ; that they were 
unanimous ; and that the comprehensive measure was to be 
introduced on Monday, the 25th. On that Monday, however, 
the Cabinet were hastily summoned together. Sir John 
rushed to the spot, and a piece of alarming news awaited him. 
Some leading members of the Cabinet had refused point blank 
to have anything to do with the comprehensive bill. Here 
was a coil ! It was two o'clock. Lord Derby had to address 
a meeting of the Conservative party at half-past two. Mr. 
Disraeli had to introduce the bill, some bill, in the House of 
Commons at half-past four. Something must be done. Some 
bill must be introduced. All eyes, we may suppose, glanced 
at the clock. Sir John Pakington averred that there were 
only ten minutes left for decision. It is plain that no man, 
whatever his gift of statesmanship or skill of penmanship, can 



302 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxi. 

draw up a complete Keform Bill in ten minutes. Now came 
into full light the wisdom and providence of those who had 
hit upon the plan of keeping a second-class bill, if we may use 
such an expression, ready for emergencies. Out came the 
second-class bill, and it was promptly resolved that Mr. 
Disraeli should go down to the House of Commons and 
gravely introduce that, as if it were the measure which the 
Government had all along had it in their minds to bring for- 
ward. Sir John defended that resolution with simple and 
practical earnestness. It was not a wise resolve, he admitted; 
but who can be certain of acting wisely with only ten minutes 
for deliberation ? If they had had even an hour to think the 
matter over, he had no doubt, he said, that they would not 
have made any mistake. But they had not an hour, and 
there was an end of the matter. They had to do some- 
thing; and so Mr. Disraeli brought in his second-class 
measure ; the measure which Sir John Pakington's piquant 
explanation sent down into political history with the name of 
the * Ten Minutes' Bill.' 

The trouble arose, it seems, in this way. After the Cabinet 
broke up on the evening of Saturday, February 23, in seeming 
harmony, Lord Cranborne worked out the figures of the bill, 
and found that they would almost amount to household 
suffrage in some of the boroughs. That would never do, he 
thought; and so he tendered his resignation. This would 
almost, as a matter of course, involve other resignations too. 
Therefore came the hasty meeting of the Cabinet on Monday, 
the 25th, which Sir John Pakington described with such un- 
conscious humour. Lord Cranborne, and those who thought 
with him, were induced to remain, on condition that the com- 
prehensive bill should be quietly put aside, and the ten minutes' 
bill as quietly substituted. Unfortunately, the reception given 
to the ten minutes' bill was utterly discouraging. It was clear 
to Mr. Disraeli's experienced eye that it had not a chance from 
either side of the House. Mr. Disraeli made up his mind, and 
Lord Derby assented. There was nothing to be done but to 
fall back on the comprehensive measure. Unwilling col- 
leagues must act upon their convictions and go. It would be 
idle to secure their co-operation by persevering further with a 
bill that no one would have. Therefore it was that on February 
26 Mr. Disraeli withdrew his bill of the day before, the ten 
minutes' bill, and announced that the Government would go 
to work in good earnest, and bring in a real bill on March 18. 



ch. xxi. REFORM. 303 

This proved to be the bill based on the resolutions ; the com* 
prehensive bill, which had been suddenly put out of sight at 
the hasty meeting of the Cabinet on Monday, February 25, as 
described in the artless and unforgotten eloquence of Sir John 
Pakington's Droitwich speech. Then General Peel, Lord 
Carnarvon, and Lord Cranborne resigned their offices. For 
the second time within ten years a Conservative Cabinet had 
been split up on a question of Eeform and the Borough 
Franchise. 

It must be owned that it required some courage and nerve 
on Mr. Disraeli's part to face the House of Commons with 
another scheme and a newly- constructed Cabinet, after all 
these surprises. The first thing to do was to reorganise the 
Cabinet by getting a new War Secretary, Colonial Secretary, 
and Secretary for India. Before March 8 this was accom- 
plished. The men who had resigned carried with them into 
their retirement the respect of all their political opponents. 
During his short administration of India, Lord Cranborne 
had shown not merely capacity, for that everyone knew he 
possessed, but a gravity, self-restraint, and sense of responsi- 
bility, for which even his friends had not previously given 
him credit. Sir John Pakington became War Minister, Mr. 
Corry succeeding him as First Lord of the Admiralty. The 
Duke of Buckingham became Colonial Secretary. The ad- 
ministration of the India Department was transferred to Sir 
Stafford Northcote, whose place at the head of the Board 
of Trade thus vacated was taken by the Duke of Eichmond. 
Then, having thrown their mutineers overboard, the Govern- 
ment went to work again at their Beform scheme. On March 
18 Mr. Disraeli introduced the bill. As regarded the franchise, 
this measure proposed that in boroughs all who paid rates, or 
twenty shillings a year in direct taxation, should have the 
vote; and also that property in the funds and savings banks, 
and so forth, should be honoured with the franchise ; and 
that there should be a certain educational franchise as well. 
The clauses for the extension of the franchise were counter- 
balanced and fenced around with all manner of ingeniously 
devised qualifications to prevent the force of numbers among 
the poorer classes from having too much of its own way. 
There was a disheartening elaborateness of ingenuity in all 
these devices. The machine was far too daintily adjusted; 
the checks and balances were too cleverly arranged by half ; 
it was apparent to almost every eye that some parts of the 



304 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xnh 

mechanism would infallibly get out of working order, and 
that some others would never get into it. Mr. Bright com- 
pared the whole ssheme to a plan for offering something 
with one hand and quietly withdrawing it with the other. 
There was, however, one aspect of the situation which to 
many Beformers seemed decidedly hopeful. It was plain to 
them now that the Government were determined to do any- 
thing whatever in order to get a Eeform Bill of some kind 
passed that year. They would have anything which could 
command a majority rather than nothing. Lord Derby after- 
wards frankly admitted that he did not see why a monopoly of 
Eeform should be left to the Liberals ; and Mr. Disraeli had 
clearly made up his mind that he would not go out of office 
this time on a Eeform Bill. 

The leading spirits of the Government were now deter- 
mined to carry a Eeform Bill that session, come what would. 
One by one, all Mr. Disraeli's checks, balances, and securities 
were abandoned. The fancy franchises were swept clear 
away. At various stages of the bill Mr. Disraeli kept an- 
nouncing that if this or that amendment were carried against 
the Government, the Government would not go any further 
with the bill ; but when the particular amendment was carried, 
Mr. Disraeli always announced that Ministers had changed 
their minds after all, and were willing to accept the new 
alteration. At last this little piece of formality began to be 
regarded by the House as mere ceremonial. The bill became 
in the end a measure to establish household suffrage pure and 
simple in the towns. The Eeform Bill passed through its final 
stage on August 15, 1867. We may summarise its results thus 
concisely. It enfranchised in boroughs all male householders 
rated for the relief of the poor, and all lodgers resident for one 
year, and paying not less than 101. a year rent ; and in coun- 
ties, persons of property of the clear annual value of 51., and 
occupiers of lands or tenements paying 12Z. a year. It disfran- 
chised certain small boroughs, and reduced the representation 
of other constituencies ; it created several new constituencies ; 
among others the borough of Chelsea and the borough of 
Hackney. It gave a third member to Manchester, Liverpool, 
Birmingham, and Leeds; it gave a representative to the 
University of London. It secured a sort of representation of 
minorities in certain constituencies by enacting that where 
there were to be three representatives, each elector should 
vote for only two candidates ; and that in the City of London, 



CH. xxi. REFORM. 305 

which has four members, each elector should only vote for 
three. The Irish and Scotch Eeform Bills were put off for 
another year. We may, however, anticipate a little, and dis- 
pose of the Scotch and Irish Bills at once, the more especially 
as both proved to be very trivial and unsatisfactory. The 
Scotch Bill gave Scotland a borough franchise the same a3 
that of England ; and a county franchise based either on 51. 
clear annual value of property, or an occupation of 14L a 
year. The Government proposed at first to make the county 
occupation franchise the same as that in England. All quali- 
fication as to rating for the poor was, however, struck out of 
the bill by amendments, the rating systems of Scotland being 
unlike those of England. The Government then put in 14Z. 
as the equivalent of the English occupier's 121. rating fran- 
chise. Some new seats were given to Scotland, which the 
Government at first proposed to get by increasing the number 
of members of the House of Commons, but which they were 
forced by amendments to obtain by the disfranchisement of 
some small English boroughs. The Irish Bill is hardly worth 
mentioning. It left the county franchise as it was, 12L, re- 
duced the borough franchise from 81. to 4?., and did nothing 
in the way of redistribution. 

. While the English Eeform Bill was passing through its 
several stages, the Government went deliberately out of their 
way to make themselves again ridiculous with regard to the 
public meetings in Hyde Park. The Reform League convened 
a public meeting to be held in that park on May 6. Mr. 
Walpole, on May 1, issued a proclamation intended to prevent 
the meeting, and warning all persons not to attend it. The 
League took legal advice, found that their meeting would not 
be contrary to law, and accordingly issued a counter procla- 
mation asserting their right, and declaring that the meeting 
would be held in order to maintain it. The Government found 
out a little too late that the League had strict law on their 
side. The law gave to the Crown control over the parks, and 
the right of prosecuting trespassers of any kind ; but it gave 
the Administration no power to anticipate trespass from the 
holding of a public meeting, and to prohibit it in advance. 
The meeting was held ; it was watched by a large body of 
police and soldiers; but it passed over very quietly, and 
indeed to curious spectators looking for excitement seemed a 
very humdrum sort of affair. Mr. Walpole, the Home Secre- 
tary, who had long been growing weary of the thankless 



306 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxi. 

troubles of his office at a time of such excitement, and who 
was not strong enough to face the difficulties of the hour, 
resigned his post. Mr. Walpole retained, however, his seat in 
the Cabinet. He was a man highly esteemed by all parties ; 
a man of high principle and of amiable character. But he 
was not equal to the occasion when any difficulty arose, and 
he contrived to put himself almost invariably in the wrong 
when dealing with the Eeform League. He exerted his 
authority at a wrong time, and in a wrong way ; and he gene- 
rally withdrew from his wrong position in somewhat too 
penitent and humble an attitude. He strained too far the 
authority of his place, and he did not hold high enough its 
dignity. He was succeeded in office by Mr. Gathorne Hardy, 
who left the Poor Law Board to become Home Secretary. 

The Eeform Bill then was passed. The ' Leap in the 
Dark ' was taken. Thus did the Prime Minister, Lord Derby, 
describe the policy of himself and his colleagues. The phrase 
has become historical, and its authorship is invariably ascribed 
to Lord Derby. It was in fact Lord Cranborne who first used 
it. During the debates in the House of Commons he had 
taunted the Government with taking a leap in the dark. Lord 
Derby adopted the expression, and admitted it to be a just 
description of the movement which he and his Ministry had 
made. It is impossible to deny that the Government acted 
sagaciously in settling the question so promptly and so deci- 
sively ; in agreeing to almost anything rather than postpone 
the settlement of the controversy even for another year. But 
one is still lost in wonder at the boldness, the audacity, with 
which the Conservative Government threw away in succession 
every principle which they had just been proclaiming essential 
to Conservatism, and put on Badicalism in its stead. The 
one thing, however, which most people were thinking of in the 
autumn of 1867 was that the Eeform question was settled at 
last, and for a long time. Mr. Lowe is entitled to the closing 
word of the controversy. The working men, the majority, 
the people who live in the small houses, are enfranchised; 
• we must now,' Mr. Lowe said, ' at least educate our new 
masters.' 

While this great measure of domestic reform was being 
accomplished a great colonial reform was quietly .carried out. 
On February 19, 1867, Lord Carnarvon, Secretary for the 
Colonies, moved the second reading of the Bill for the Con- 
federation of the North American Provinces of the British 



ch. xxi. REFORM. 307 

Empire. This was in fact a measure to carry out in practical 
form the great principles which Lord Durham had laid down 
in his celebrated report. The bill prepared by Lord Carnar- 
von proposed that the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, in 
other words Upper and Lower Canada, along with Nova 
Scotia and New Brunswick, should be joined in one federa- 
tion, to be called the Dominion of Canada, having a central 
or federal Parliament, and local or state Legislatures. The 
central Parliament was to consist of a Senate and a House of 
Commons. The Senate was to be made up of seventy mem- 
bers nominated by the Governor- General for life, on a 
summons from under the Great Seal of Canada. The House 
of Commons was to be filled by members elected by the 
people of the provinces according to population, at the rate of 
one member for every 17,000 persons, and the duration of a 
Parliament was not to be more than five years. The execu- 
tive was vested in the Crown, represented of course by the 
Governor -General. The central Parliament manages the 
common affairs ; each province has its own local laws and 
legislature. There is the greatest possible variety and diver- 
sity in the local systems of the different provinces of the 
Dominion. The members are elected to the House of Com- 
mons on the most diverse principles of suffrage. In some of 
the provinces the vote is open ; in others it is given by ballot, 
in secret. The Dominion scheme only provided at first for the 
Confederation of the two Canadian provinces with Nova Scotia 
and New Brunswick. Provision was made, however, for the 
admission of any other province of British North America 
which should desire to follow suit. The newly constructed 
province of Manitoba, made up out of what had been the 
Hudson's Bay territories, was the first to come in. It was 
admitted into the union in 1870. British Columbia and Van- 
couver's Island followed in 1871, and Prince Edward's Island 
claimed admission in 1873. The Dominion now embraces the 
whole of the regions constituting British North America, with 
the exception of Newfoundland, which still prefers its lonely 
system of quasi-independence. It may be assumed, however, 
that this curious isolation will not last long ; and the Act 
constituting the Dominion opens the door for the entrance of 
this latest lingerer outside whenever she may think fit to 
claim admission. 

The idea of a federation of the provinces of British North 
America was not new in 1867, or even in the days of Lord 



308 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxi. 

Durham. When the delegates of the revolted American 
colonies were discussing among themselves their terms of 
federation, they agreed in their articles of union, that Canada 
' acceding to the Confederation and joining in the measures of 
the United States, shall be admitted into and entitled to the 
advantages of the union.' No answer to this appeal was made 
by either of the Canadas, but the idea of union among the 
British provinces among themselves evidently took root then. 
As early as 1810 a colonist put forward a somewhat elaborate 
scheme for the union of the provinces. In 1814 Chief Justice 
Sewell, of Quebec, submitted a plan of union to the Duke of 
Kent. In 1827 resolutions were introduced into the Legisla- 
tive Assembly of Upper Canada, having relation principally to 
a combination of the two Canadas, but also suggesting some- 
thing ' more politic, wise, and generally advantageous ; viz. 
an union of the whole four provinces of North America under 
a viceroyalty, with a facsimile of that great and glorious fabric, 
the best monument of human wisdom, the British Constitu- 
tion.' Nothing further, however, was done to advance the 
principle of federation until after the rebellion in Canada, and 
the brief dictatorship of, Lord Durham. Then, as we have 
already said, the foundation of the system was laid. In 1849 
an association, called the North American League, was 
formed, which held a meeting in Toronto to promote Confe- 
deration. In 1854 the Legislative Assembly of Nova Scotia 
discussed and adopted resolutions recommending the closer 
connection of the British provinces ; and in 1857 the same 
province urged the question upon the consideration of Mr. 
Labouchere, afterwards Lord Taunton, and then Colonial 
Secretary. Mr. Labouchere seems to have thought that the 
Imperial Government had better not meddle or make in the 
matter, but leave it altogether for the spontaneous action of 
the colonists. In the following year the coalition Ministry of 
Canada, during the Governor- Generalship of Sir Francis 
Head, made a move by entering into communications with 
the Imperial Government and with the other American pro- 
vinces. The other provinces hung back however, and nothing 
came of this effort. Then Nova Scotia tried to get up a 
scheme of union between herself, New Brunswick, and Prince 
Edward's Island. Canada offered to enter into the scheme ; 
and in 1864 Mr. Cardwell, then Colonial Secretary, gave it 
his approval. New conferences were held in Quebec, but the 
plan was not successful. New Brunswick seems to have held 



CH. xxi. REFORM. 30$ 

back this time. It was clear, however, that the provinces 
were steadily moving toward an agreement, and that a basis of 
federation would be found before long. The maritime pro- 
vinces always felt some difficulty in seeing then way to union 
with the Canadas. Their outlying position and then distance 
from the proposed seat of central government made one 
obvious reason for hesitation. Even at the time when the 
bill for Confederation was introduced into the House of 
Lords, Nova Scotia was still holding back. That difficulty, 
however, was got over, and the Act was passed in March 
1867. Lord Monck was made the first Governor- General of 
the new Dominion, and its first Parliament met at Ottawa in 
November of the same year. 

In 1869 — we are now somewhat anticipating — the Domi- 
nion was enlarged by the acquisition of the famous Hudson's 
Bay territory. When the Charter of the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany, which dated from the reign of Charles II., expired in 
1869, Lord Granville, then Colonial Secretary, proposed that 
the chief part of the Company's territories should be trans- 
ferred to the Dominion for 300,000Z. ; and the proposition was 
agreed to on both sides. The Eed Biver country, a portion of 
the transferred territory, rose in rebellion, and refused to 
receive the new Governor. Louis Biel, the insurgent chief, 
seized on Fort Garry and the Company's treasury, and pro- 
claimed the independence of the settlement. Colonel Wolse- 
ley, now Lord Wolseley, was sent in command of an expedi- 
tion which reached Fort Garry on August 23, when the 
insurgents submitted without resistance, and the district 
received the name of Manitoba. Thus the Dominion of Canada 
now stretches from ocean to ocean. The population of British 
North America did not exceed one million and a half in 1841, 
at the time of the granting of the Constitution, and it is now 
over four millions. The revenue of the provinces has multiplied 
more than twentyfold during the same time. Canada has every- 
thing that ought to make a commonwealth great and prosperous. 
The fisheries of her maritime provinces, the coal and iron of 
the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the grain-producing regions of 
the North-West, the superb St. Lawrence, hardly rivalled on 
the globe as a channel of commerce from the interior of a 
country to the ocean — all these are guarantees of a great 
future. 

Equal with Canada in importance are the Australian 
islands. Australia now consists of five separate colonies— 



310 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. XXI. 

New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, South Aus- 
tralia, and Queensland; all these are provinces of one vast 
island, the largest island in the world. New Zealand and 
Tasmania are other islands of the Australasian group. All 
these colonies have now representative government, with 
responsible ministries and parliamentary Chambers. New 
South Wales is the oldest of the provinces of Australia. Its 
political life may be said to date from 1853, when it first 
received what is fairly to be called a constitution. For ten 
years previously it had possessed a sort of legislature, consist* 
ing of a single Chamber, of which half the members wer* 
nominee, and the other half elected. One of the most distin. 
guished members of that Chamber for many years was Mr. 
Lowe, who appears to have learned to hate democratic! 
government from watching over its earliest infancy, as some 
women imbibe a dislike to all children from having had to do 
too much nursery- work in their girlhood. Victoria, which was 
separated from New South Wales in 1851, got her liberal con- 
stitution in 1856. The other colonies followed by degrees. 
The constitutional systems differ among themselves as to cer- 
tain of their details. The electoral qualification, for example, 
differs considerably. Generally speaking, however, they may 
be set down as all alike illustrating the principles and exercis- 
ing the influence of representative government. They have 
not got on so far without much confusion and many sad mis- 
takes. The constitutional controversies and difficulties in 
Victoria and in other Australian colonies are a favourite 
example with some writers and speakers, to show the failure 
of the democratic principle in government. But it is always 
forgotten that the principle of representative government in 
a colony like Victoria is, as a matter of necessity, that of 
democracy. Even those who believe the aristocratic influence 
invaluable in the life of a nation must see that New South 
Wales and Victoria and Queensland must somehow contrive 
to do without such an influence. An aristocracy cannot be 
imported ; nor can it be sown in the evening to grow up next 
morning. The colonists are compelled to construct a system 
without it. There are many difficulties in their way. It is 
often carelessly said that they ought to find the work easy 
enough, because they have the example and the experience of 
England to guide them. But they have no such guide. The 
conditions under which the colonies have to create a con- 
stitutional system ar** entirely different from those of Eng* 



CH. xxi. REFORM. 311 

land ; so different, indeed, that there must be a certain 
danger of going astray simply from trying to follow Eng- 
land's example under circumstances entirely unlike those of 
England. 

CHAPTEK XXII. 

STEIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD. 

On February 16, 1866, Lord Eussell told the House of 
Lords, and Sir George Grey announced to the House of 
Commons, that the Government intended to suspend the 
Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland, and that both Houses of 
Parliament were to be called together next day for the pur- 
pose of enabling the Ministry to carry out this resolve. 
The next day was Saturday, an unusual day for a Parlia- 
mentary sitting at any early part of the session ; unusual, 
indeed, when the session had only just begun. The Govern- 
ment could only excuse such a summons to the Lords and 
Commons on the plea of absolute urgency ; and the word soon 
went round in the lobbies that a serious discovery had been 
made, and that a conspiracy of a formidable nature was pre- 
paring a rebellion in Ireland. The two Houses met next day, 
and a measure was introduced to suspend the Habeas Corpus 
Act in Ireland, and give the Lord-Lieutenant almost un- 
limited power to arrest and detain suspected persons. It seems 
almost superfluous to say that such a bill was not allowed to 
pass without some comment, and even some opposition, in the 
House of Commons. Mr. Mill spoke against it. Mr. Bright 
made a speech which has always since been regarded as in 
every sense one of the very finest he ever delivered. The 
measure however was run through its three readings in both 
Houses in the course of the day. The House of Lords had to 
keep up their sitting until the document should arrive from 
Osborne to authorise the Commissioners to give the Queen's 
assent to the bill. The Lords, therefore, having discussed the 
subject sufficiently to their satisfaction at a comparatively early 
hour of the evening, suspended the sitting until eleven at night. 
They then resumed, and waited patiently for the authority to 
come from Osborne, where the Queen was staying. Shortly 
before midnight the needful authority arrived, and the bill 
became law at twenty minutes before one o'clock on Sunday 
morning. 



312 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. XXII. 

The Fenian movement differed from nearly all previous 
movements of the same kind in Ireland, in the fact that it 
arose and grew into strength without the patronage or the 
help of any of those who might be called the natural leaders 
of the people. In 1798 and in 1848 some men of great ability, 
or strength of purpose, or high position, or all attributes com- 
bined, made themselves leaders, and the others followed. In 
1798 the rising had the impulse of almost intolerable personal 
as well as national grievance ; but it is doubtful whether any 
formidable and organised movement might have been made 
but for the leadership of such men as Wolfe Tone and Lord 
Edward Fitzgerald. In 1848 there were such impulses as the 
traditional leadership of Smith O'Brien, the indomitable pur- 
pose of Mitchel, and the impassioned eloquence of Meagher. 
But Fenianism seemed to have sprung out of the very soil of 
Ireland itself. Its leaders were not men of high position, or 
distinguished name, or proved ability. They were not of 
aristocratic birth ; they were not orators ; they were not 
powerful writers. It was not the impulse of the American 
Civil War that engendered Fenianism ; although that war 
had great influence on the manner in which Fenianism shaped 
its course. Fenianism had been in existence, in fact, although 
it had not got its peculiar name, long before the American 
War created a new race of Irishmen — the Irish-American 
soldiers — to turn their energies and their military inclination 
to a new purpose. 

Agitation in the form of secret association had never 
ceased in Ireland. One result of prosecutions for seditious 
speaking and writing in Ireland is invariably the encourage- 
ment of secret combination. The suspension of the Habeas 
Corpus Act, in consequence of the 1848 movement, led, as a 
matter of course, to secret association. Before the trials of 
the Irish leaders were well over in that year, a secret associa- 
tion was formed by a large number of young Irishmen in 
cities and towns. It was got up by young men of good cha- 
racter and education ; it spread from town to town ; it was 
conducted with the most absolute secrecy ; it had no informer 
in its ranks. It had its oath of fidelity and its regular leaders, 
its nightly meetings, and even to a limited and cautious extent 
its nightly drillings. It was a failure, because in the nature 
of things it could not be anything else. The young men had 
not arms enough anywhere to render them formidable in any 
one place ; and the necessity of carrying on their communica- 



ch. xxii. STRIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD. 313 

tions with different towns in profound secrecy, and by round- 
about ways of communication, made a prompt concerted action 
impossible. After two or three attempts to arrange for a 
simultaneous rising had failed, or had ended only in little abor- 
tive and isolated ebullitions, the young men became dis- 
couraged. Some of the leaders went to France, some to the 
United States, some actually to England ; and the association 
melted away. Some years after this, the ' Phoenix ' clubs 
began to be formed in Ireland. They were for the most part 
associations of the peasant class ; they led to some of the ordi- 
nary prosecutions and convictions ; and that was all. After 
the Phoenix associations came the Fenians. The Fenians are 
said to have been the ancient Irish militia. The Fenian 
agitation began about 1858, and it came to perfection about 
the middle of the American Civil War. A convention was 
held in America, and the Fenian Association was resolved into 
a regular organised institution. A provisional government 
was established in New York, with all the array and the 
mechanism of an actual working administration. 

The emigration of the Irish to America had introduced an 
entirely new element into political calculations. The Irish 
grew rapidly in numbers and in strength all over the United 
States. The constitutional system adopted there enabled 
them almost at once to become citizens of the Eepublic. They 
availed themselves of this privilege almost universally. The 
Irish working man, who had never probably had any chance 
of giving a vote in his own country, found himself in the United 
States a person of political power, whose vote was courted 
by the leaders of different parties, and whose sentiments 
were flattered by the wire-pullers of opposing factions. He 
was not slow to appreciate the value of this influence in its 
bearing on that political question which in all the sincerity of 
his American citizenship was still the dearest to his heart — 
the condition of Ireland. The Irish in the States made their 
political organisations the means of keeping up a constant 
agitation, having for its object to secure the co-operation of 
American parties in some designs against England. After the 
Civil War the feelings of almost all the political parties in the 
States, in the South as well as in the North, were hostile to 
England. At such a moment, and under such a condition of 
things, it is not surprising if many of the Fenian leaders in 
America should have thought it easy or at least quite possible 
to force the hand of the Government, and to bring on a war 
14 



314 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxn. 

with England. At all events, it is not surprising if they 
should have believed that the American Governmbnt would 
put forth little effort to prevent the Fenians from using the 
frontier of the United States as a basis of operations against 
England. 

Meanwhile there began to be a constant mysterious influx 
of strangers into Ireland. They were strangers who for the 
most part had Celtic features and the bearing of American 
soldiers. They distributed themselves throughout the towns 
and villages ; most of them had relatives or old friends here 
and there, to whom they told stories of the share they had 
had in the big war across the Atlantic and of the preparations 
that were making in the States for the accomplishment of 
Irish independence. All this time the Fenians in the States 
were filling the columns of friendly journals with accounts of 
the growth of their organisation and announcements of the 
manner in which it was to be directed to its purpose. After 
a while things went so far that the Fenian leaders in the 
United States issued an address, announcing that their officers 
were going to Ireland to raise an army there for the recovery 
of the country's independence. Of course the Government 
here were soon quite prepared to receive them ; and indeed 
the authorities easily managed to keep themselves informed 
by means of spies of all that was going on in Ireland. The 
spy system was soon flourishing in full force. Every con- 
siderable gathering of Fenians had amongst its numbers at 
least one person who generally professed a yet fiercer devotion 
to the cause than any of the rest, and who was in the habit of 
carrying to Dublin Castle every night his official report of 
what his Fenian colleagues had been doing. It is positively 
stated that in one instance a Protestant detective in the pay 
of the Government actually passed himself off as a Catholic, 
and took the Sacrament openly in a Catholic church in order 
to establish his Catholic orthodoxy in the eyes of his com- 
panions. One need not be a Catholic in order to understand 
the grossness of the outrage which conduct like this must 
seem to be in the eyes of all who believe in the mysteries of 
the Catholic faith. Meanwhile the Head Centre of Fenianism 
in America, James Stephens, who had borne a part in the 
movement in 1848, arrived in Ireland. He was arrested in the 
company of Mr. Charles J. Kickham, the author of many poems 
of great sweetness and beauty ; a man of pure and virtuous 
character. Stephens was committed to Richmond Prison, 



ch. xxii. STRIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD. 315 

Dublin, early in November 1865 ; but before many days had 
passed the country was startled by the news that he had con- 
trived to make his escape. The escape was planned with skill 
and daring. For a time it helped to strengthen the impres- 
sion on the mind of the Irish peasantry that in Stephens 
there had at last been found an insurgent leader of adequate 
courage, craft, and good fortune. 

Stephens disappeared for a moment from the stage. In 
the meantime disputes and dissensions had arisen among the 
Fenians in America. The schism had gone so far as to lead 
to the setting up of two separate associations. There were of 
course distracted plans. One party was for an invasion of 
Canada; another pressed for operations in Ireland itself. 
The Canadian attempt actually was made. A small body of 
Fenians, a sort of advance-guard, crossed the Niagara river on 
the night of May 31, 1866, occupied Fort Erie, and drove 
back the Canadian volunteers who first advanced against 
them. For a moment a gleam of success shone on the 
attempt ; but the United States enforced the neutrality of 
their frontier lines with a sudden energy and strictness wholly 
unexpected by the Fenians. They prevented any further 
crossing of the river, and arrested several of the leaders on the 
American side. The Canadian authorities hurried up rein- 
forcements ; several Fenians were taken and shot ; others re- 
crossed the river, and the invasion scheme was over. 

The Fenians then resolved to do something on the other 
side of the Atlantic. One venture was a scheme for the 
capture of Chester Castle. The plan was that a sufficient 
number of the Fenians in England should converge towards 
the ancient town of Chester, should suddenly appear there on 
a given day in February 1867, capture the castle, seize the 
arms they found there, cut the telegraph wires, make for 
Holyhead, but a short distance by rail, seize on some vessels 
there, and then steam for the Irish coast. The Government 
were fully informed of the plot in advance ; the police were 
actually on the look-out for the arrival of strangers in Chester, 
and the enterprise melted away. In March 1867 an attempt 
at a general rising was made in Ireland. It was a total 
failure ; the one thing on which the country had to be con- 
gratulated was that it failed so completely and so quickly aa 
to cause little bloodshed. Every influence combined to mini- 
mise the waste of life. The snow fell that spring as it had 
scarcely ever fallen before in the soft, mild climate of Ireland, 



316 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxil. 

Silently, unceasingly it came down all day long and all night 
long ; it covered the roads and the fields ; it made the gorges 
of the mountains untenable, and the gorges of the mountains 
were to be the encampments and the retreats of the Fenian 
insurgents. The snow fell for many days and nights, and 
when it ceased falling the insurrectionary movement was over. 
The insurrection was literally buried in that unlooked-for 
snow. There were some attacks on police barracks in various 
places — in Cork, in Kerry, in Limerick, in Tipperary, in 
Louth ; there were some conflicts with the police ; there were 
some shots fired, many captures made, a few lives lost ; and 
then for the time at least all was over. 

There was, however, much feeling in England as well as 
in Ireland for some of the Fenian leaders who now began to 
be put upon their trials. They bore themselves with manli- 
ness and dignity. Some of them had been brave soldiers in 
the American Civil War, and were entitled to wear honourable 
marks of distinction. Many had given up a successful career 
or a prosperous calling in the United States to take part in 
what they were led to believe would be the great national up- 
rising of the Irish people. They spoke up with courage in the 
dock, and declared their perfect readiness to die for what they 
held to be a sacred cause. They indulged in no bravado and 
uttered no word of repining. One of the leaders, Colonel 
Burke, who had served with distinction in the army of the 
Southern Confederation, was sentenced to death in May 1867. 
A great public meeting was held in St. James's Hall, London, 
to adopt a memorial praying that the sentence might not be 
carried out. Among those who addressed the meeting was 
Mr. Mill. It was almost altogether an English meeting. 
The hall was crowded with English working men. The Irish 
element had hardly any direct representation there. Yet 
there was absolute unanimity, there was intense enthusiasm, 
in favour of the mitigation of the sentence on Colonel Burke 
and his companions. The great hall rang with cheer after 
cheer as Mr. Mill, in a voice made stronger than its wont by 
the intensity of his emotions, pleaded for a policy of mercy. 
The voice of that great meeting was heard in the ministerial 
councils, and the sentence of death was not inflicted. 

Not many months after this event the world was aroused 
to amazement by the news of the daring rescue of Fenian 
prisoners in Manchester. Two Fenian prisoners, named Kelly 
and Deasy, were being conveyed in the prison van from one 



CH. xxii. STRIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD, 317 

of the police courts to the borough gaol to await further 
examination. On the way the van was stopped by a number 
of armed Fenians, who broke it open. In the scuffle a police- 
man was killed. The rescue was accomplished ; the prisoners 
were hurried away, and were never after seen by English 
officials. The principal rescuers were captured and put on 
their trial for the murder of the policeman. Five were found 
guilty : their names were Allen, Larkin, O'Brien, Condon or 
Shore, and Maguire. Allen was a young fellow — a mere lad 
under twenty. The defence was that the prisoners only medi- 
tated a rescue, and that the death of the policeman was but an 
accident. All the five were sentenced to death. Then followed 
an almost unprecedented occurrence. After the trial it was 
proved that one of the five, Maguire, never was near the spot 
on the day of the rescue ; that he was a loyal private in the 
Marines, and no Fenian ; that he never knew anything about 
the plot or heard of it until he was arrested. He received a 
pardon at once, that being the only way in which he could be 
extricated from the effect of the mistaken verdict. 

One other of the five prisoners who were convicted to- 
gether escaped the death-sentence. This was Condon or 
Shore, an American by citizenship if not by birth. He had 
undoubtedly been concerned in the attempt at rescue ; but for 
some reason a distinction was made between him and the 
others. This act of mercy, in itself highly commendable, 
added to the bad effect produced in Ireland by the execution 
of the other three men ; for it gave rise to the belief that 
Shore had been spared only because the protection of the 
American Government might have been invoked on his behalf. 
Many strenuous attempts were made to procure a commutation 
of the sentence in the cases of the other prisoners. Mr. 
Bright exerted himself with characteristic energy and human- 
ity. Mr. Swinburne, the poet, made an appeal to the people 
of England in lines of great power and beauty on behalf of a 
policy of mercy to the prisoners. Lord Derby, who had then 
come to be at the head of the Government, refused to listen to 
any appeal. The remaining three, Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien, 
were executed. 

The excitement caused by the attempt they had made and 
the penalty they paid had hardly died away when a crime of a 
peculiarly atrocious nature was committed in the name of 
Fenianism. On December 13 an attempt was made to blow 
up the House of Detention at Clerkenwell. Two Fenian 



318 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxil. 

prisoners were in the Clerkenwell House of Detention, and 
some sympathisers outside had attempted to rescue them by 
placing a barrel of gunpowder close to the wall of the prison, 
and exploding the powder by means of a match and a fuse. 
About sixty yards of the prison wall were blown in, and 
numbers of small houses in the neighbourhood were shattered 
to pieces. Six persons were killed on the spot ; about six 
more died fcom the effects of the injuries they received ; some 
hundred and twenty persons were wounded. The clumsiness 
of the crime was only surpassed by its atrocity. Had the 
prisoners on whose behalf the attempt was made been near 
the wall at the time, they must have shared the fate of those 
who were victimised outside. Had they even been taking 
exercise in the yard, they would, in all probability, have been 
killed. They would have been taking exercise at the time 
had it not been for a warning the authorities at Scotland 
Yard received two days before, to the effect that an attempt 
at rescue was to be made by means of gunpowder and the 
blowing in of the wall. In consequence of this warning the 
governor of the prison had the prisoners confined to their cells 
that day ; and thus, in all probability, they owed their lives 
to the disclosure of the secret plan which their officious and 
ill-omened admirers had in preparation for their rescue. It is 
difficult to understand why the prison authorities and the 
police, thus forewarned, did not keep a sufficient watch upon 
the line of prison wall to prevent the possibility of any such 
scheme being put into execution. Five men and a woman 
were put on trial for the crime. The proceedings against 
the woman and one of the men were withdrawn, three other 
prisoners were acquitted after a long trial ; one man was con- 
victed and executed. 

It is not necessary to follow out the steps of the Fenian 
movement any further. There were many isolated attempts ;, 
there were many arrests, trials, imprisonments, banishments. 
The phenomena of the Fenian movement did not fail to 
impress some statesmanlike minds in England. There were 
some public men who saw that the time had come when mere 
repression must no longer be relied upon as a cure for Irish 
discontent. While many public instructors lost themselves 
in vain shriekings over the wickedness of Fenianism and the 
incurable perversity of the Irish people, one statesman was 
already convinced that the very shock of the Fenian agitation 
would arouse public attention to the recognition of substantial 



CH. xxil. STRIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD. 319 

grievance, and to the admission that the business of states- 
manship was to seek out the remedy and provide redress. 

English society was much distressed and disturbed about 
the same time by the stories of outrages more cruel, and of a 
conspiracy more odious and alarming in its purpose than any 
that could be ascribed to the Fenian movement. It began to 
be common talk that among the trades-associations there was 
systematic terrorising of the worst kind. Ordinary intimida- 
tion had long been regarded as one of the means by which 
some of the trades-unions kept their principles in force. Now, 
however, it was common report that secret assassination was 
in many cases the doom of those who brought on themselves 
the wrath of the Trades-unions. For many years the great 
town of Sheffield had had a special notoriety in consequence 
of the outrages of the kind that were believed to be committed 
there. When a workman had made himself obnoxious to the 
leaders of some local trades-union, it occasionally happened 
that some sudden and signal misfortune befell him. Perhaps 
his house was set on fire ; perhaps a canister of gunpowder 
was exploded under his windows, or some rudely constructed 
infernal machine was flung into his bed-room at midnight. 
The man himself, supposing him to have escaped with his life, 
felt convinced that in the attempt to destroy him he saw the 
hand of the union ; his neighbours were of his opinion ; but it 
sometimes happened, nevertheless, that there was no possi- 
bility of bringing home the charge upon evidence that could 
satisfy a criminal court. The comparative impunity which 
guch crimes were enabled to secure made the perpetrators of 
them feel more and more safe in their enterprises ; and the 
result was that outrages began to increase in atrocity, boldness, 
and numbers. The employers offered large rewards for the 
discovery of the offenders ; the Government did the same ; 
but not much came of the offers. The employers charged the 
local trades-unions with being the authors of all the crimes ; 
the officials of the unions distinctly and indignantly denied 
the charge. In some instances they did more. They offered 
on their own account a reward for the detection of the crimi- 
nals, in order that their own innocence might thereby be 
established once for all in the face of day. At a public meet- 
ing held in Sheffield to express public opinion on the subject, 
the secretary of one of the local unions, a man named Broad- 
head, spoke out with indignant and vehement eloquence in 
denunciation of the crimes, and in protest againsi the insmua* 



320 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxil. 

tion that they were sanctioned by the authority or done with 
the connivance of the trades- organisation. 

Nevertheless the Government resolved to undertake a full 
investigation into the whole condition of the Trades -unions. 
A Commission was appointed, and a bill passed through Parlia- 
ment enabling it to take evidence upon oath. The Commis- 
sioners sent down to Sheffield three examiners to make enquiry 
as to the outrages. The examiners had authority to offer pro- 
tection to anyone, even though himself engaged in the commis- 
sion of the outrages, who should give information which might 
lead to the discovery of the conspiracy. This offer had its full 
effect. The Government were now so evidently determined to 
get at the root of all the evil, that many of those actively engaged 
in the commission of the crimes took fright and believed they 
had best consult for their personal safety. Accordingly the 
Commission got as much evidence as could be desired, and it 
was soon put beyond dispute that more than one association had 
systematically employed the most atrocious means to punish 
offenders against their self-made laws and to deter men from 
venturing to act in opposition to them. The saw-grinders' 
union in Sheffield had been particularly active in such work, 
and the man named William Broadhead, who had so indig- 
nantly protested the innocence of his union, was the secretary 
of that organisation. Broadhead was proved to have ordered, 
arranged, and paid for the murder of at least one offender 
against his authority, and to have set on foot in the same way 
various deeds scarcely if at all less criminal. The crimes 
were paid for out of the funds of the union. There were 
gradations of outrage, ascending from what might be called 
mere personal annoyance up to the serious destruction of 
property, then to personal injury, to mutilation, and to death. 
Broadhead himself came before the examiners and acknow- 
ledged the part he had taken in the direction of such crimes. 
He explained how he had devised them, organised them, 
selected the agents by whom they were to be committed, and 
paid for them out of the funds of the union. The men whom 
he selected had sometimes no personal resentment against the 
victims they were bidden to mutilate or destroy. They were 
ordered and paid to punish men whom Broadhead considered 
to be offenders against the authority and the interests of the 
union, and they did the work obediently. In Manchester a 
state of things was found to exist only less hideous than that 
which prevailed in Sheffield. Other towns were found to be 



ch. xxii. STRIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD, 321 

not very far distant from Sheffield and Manchester in the 
audacity and ingenuity of their trade outrages. 

The great majority, however, of the Trades-unions appeared 
after the most searching investigation to be absolutely free 
from any complicity in the crimes, or any sanction of them. 
Men of sense began to ask whether society had not itself to 
blame in some measure even for the crimes of the Trades- 
unions. The law had always dealt unfairly and harshly with 
the trade -associations. Public opinion had for a long time 
regarded them as absolutely lawless. There was a time when 
their very existence would have been an infraction of the law. 
For centuries our legislation had acted on the principle that 
the working-man was a serf of society, bound to work for the 
sake of the employer and on the employer's terms. Even 
down to the period of which we are now writing, there was 
still a marked and severe distinction drawn between master 
and servant, master and workman, in our legislation. In cases 
of breach of contract the remedy against the employer was 
entirely civil ; against the employed, criminal. A workman 
might even be arrested on a warrant for alleged breach of 
contract and taken to prison before the case had been tried. 
The laws were particularly stringent in their declarations 
against all manner of combination among workmen. Any 
combined effort to raise wages would have been treated as 
conspiracy of a specially odious and dangerous order. Down 
to 1825 a mere combination of workmen for their own protec- 
tion was unlawful ; but long after 1825 the law continued to 
deal very harshly with what was called conspiracy among 
working-men for trade purposes. Not many years ago it was 
held that although a strike could not itself be pronounced 
illegal, yet a combination of workmen to bring about a strike 
was a conspiracy, and was to be properly punished by law. 
In 1867, the very year when the Commission we have described 
held its inqinries at Sheffield and Manchester, a decision given 
by the Court of Queen's Bench affirmed that a friendly society, 
which was also a trades-union, had no right to the protection 
of the law in enforcing a claim for a debt. It was laid down 
that because the rules of the society appeared to be such as 
would operate in restraint of trade, therefore the society was 
not entitled to the protection of the civil law in any ordinary 
matter of account. Trades -unions were not allowed to defend 
themselves against plunder by a dishonest member. This 
extraordinary principle was in force for several years after the 
14* 



322 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxii. 

time at which we have now arrived in this history. One resuli 
of the investigations into the outrages in Sheffield and in 
Manchester was that public attention was drawn directly to the 
whole subject ; the searching light of full free discussion was 
turned on to it, and after a while everyone began to see that 
the wanton injustice of the law and of society in dealing with 
the associations of working-men was responsible for many of 
the errors and even of the crimes into which some of the worst 
of these associations had allowed themselves to be seduced. 

It was not, however, the law alone which had set itself for 
centuries against the working-man. Public opinion and legis- 
lation were in complete agreement as to the rights of Trades- 
unions. For many years the whole body of English public 
opinion outside the working-class itself was entirely against 
the principle of the unions. It was an axiom among all the 
employing and capitalist classes that trades-organisations were 
as much to be condemned in point of morality as they were 
absurd in the sight of political economy. All the leading 
newspapers were constantly writing against the Trades-unions 
at one time ; not writing merely as a Liberal paper writes 
against some Tory measure, but as men condemn a monstrous 
heresy. Public opinion was equally well satisfied about strikes. 
Parliament, the pulpit, the press, the stage, philosophy, fiction, 
all were for a long time in combination to give forth one pro- 
nouncement on the subject. A strike was something always 
wicked and foolish ; abstractly wicked ; foolish to the funda- 
mental depths of its theory. But the working-man had often 
no way of asserting his claims effectively except by the instru- 
mentality of a strike. A court of law could do nothing for 
him. If he thought his wages ought to be raised, or ought 
not to be lowered, a court of law could not assist him. Once 
it would have compelled him to take what was offered, and 
work for it or go to prison. Now, in better times, it would 
offer him no protection against the most arbitrary conduct on 
the part of an employer. 

In spite of law, in spite of public opinion, the trades- 
unions went on and prospered. Some of them grew to be 
great organisations, disposing of vast funds. Several fought 
out agahist employers long battles that were almost like a 
social civil war. Sometimes they were defeated ; sometimes 
they were victorious ; sometimes they got at least so far that 
each side could claim the victory, and wrangle once more his- 
torically over the point. Many individual societies were badly 



ch. xxii. STRIFE AT HOME AMD ABROAD. 323 

managed and went to pieces. Some were made the victims 
of swindlers, just like other institutions among other classes. 
Some were brought into difficulties simply because of the 
childlike ignorance of the most elementary principles of poli- 
tical economy with which they were conducted. Still the 
Trades-union, taken as a whole, became stronger and stronger 
every day. It became part of the social life of the working- 
classes. At last it began to find public opinion giving way 
before it. Some eminent men, of whom Mr. Mill was the 
greatest, had long been endeavouring to get the world to 
recognise the fact that a strike is not a thing which can be 
called good or bad until we know its object and its history ; 
that the men who strike may be sometimes right, and that 
they may have sometimes been successful. But as usual in 
this country, and as another evidence doubtless of what is 
commonly called the practical character of Englishmen, the 
right of the trades-unions to existence and to social recogni- 
tion was chiefly impressed upon the public mind by the 
strength of the organisation itself. Many men came at once 
to the frankly admitted conclusion that there must be some 
principles, economic as well as others, to justify the existence 
and the growth of so remarkable an institution. The Sheffield 
outrages, even while they horrified everyone, yet made most 
persons begin to feel that the time had come when there must 
not be left in the mouth of the worst and most worthless 
member of a trades-union any excuse for saying any longer 
that the law was unjust to him and to his class. A course of 
legislation was then begun which was not made complete for 
several years after. We may, however, anticipate here the 
measures which passed in 1875, and show how at length the 
fair claims of the unions were recognised. The masters and 
workmen were placed on absolute equality as regarded the 
matter of contract. They had been thus equal for many years 
in other countries ; in France, Germany, and Italy, for 
example. A breach of contract resulting in damages was to 
be treated on either side as giving rise to a civil and not a 
criminal remedy. There was to be no imprisonment, except 
as it is ordered in other cases, by a county court judge ; that 
is, a man may be committed to prison who has been ordered 
to pay a certain sum, and out of contumacy will not pay it, 
although payment is shown to be within his power. No com- 
bination of persons is to be deemed criminal if the act pro- 
posed to be donfc would not be criminal when done by one 



324 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxii. 

person. Several breaches of contract were, however, 'very 
properly made the subject of special legislation. If, for 
example, a man ' wilfully and maliciously ' broke his contract 
of service to a gas or water company, knowing that by doing 
so he might cause great public injury, he might be imprisoned. 
It was made strictly unlawful and punishable by imprison- 
ment to hide or injure the tools of workmen in order to pre- 
vent them from doing their work ; or to ' beset ' workmen in 
order to prevent them from getting to their place of business, 
or to intimidate them into keeping away from it. In principle 
this legislation accomplished all that any reasonable advocate 
of the claims of the trades-unions could have demanded. It 
put the masters and workmen on an equality. It recognised 
the right of combination for every purpose which is not itself 
actually contrary to law. It settled the fact that the right 
of a combination is just the same as the right of an indivi- 
dual. 

The civil laws which dealt so harshly for a long time with 
Trades-unionism dealt unfairly too with the friendly societies, 
with that strong and sudden growth of our modern days — Co- 
operation. If working-men can combine effectively and in 
large numbers for a benefit society or for a strike, why should 
they not also co-operate for the purpose of supplying each 
other with good and cheap food and clothing, and dividing 
among themselves the profits which would otherwise be dis- 
tributed among various manufacturers and shopkeepers? 
This is a question which had often been put before, without 
any very decided practical result coming of it ; but in 1844, 
or thereabouts, it was put and tested in a highly practical 
manner in the North of England. The association called ' The 
Equitable Pioneers' Co-operative Store ' was founded in 
Rochdale by a few poor flannel- weavers. The times were 
bad; there had been a failure of a savings-bank, involving 
heavy loss to many classes; and these men cast about in 
their minds for some way of making their little earnings go 
far. These Eochdale weavers were thoughtful men. Most of 
them were, or rather had been, followers of Eobert Owen, a 
dreamy philanthropist and socialist, who had written books 
advocating a modified form of community of property, and 
who had tried the experiment of founding a communistio 
colony in America, which was entirely unsuccessful, 
and whose doctrines were followed by a large number 
of people, who called themselves Owenites, after him. One 



CH. xxn. STRIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD. 325 

decidedly good teaching which they had from Eobert Owen 
was a dislike to the credit system. They saw that the shop- 
keeper who gave his goods at long credit must necessarily 
have to charge a much higher price than the actual value of 
the goods, and even of a reasonable profit, in order to make 
up for his having to live out of his money, and to secure him- 
self against bad debts. They also saw that the credit system 
leads to almost incessant litigation ; and besides that litiga- 
tion means the waste of time and money ; some of them, it 
appears, had a conscientious objection to the taking of an 
oath. It occurred to these Eochdale weavers, therefore, that 
if they could get together a little capital they might start a 
shop or store of their own, and thus be able to supply them- 
selves with better goods, and at cheaper rates, than by dealing 
with the ordinary tradesmen. Twenty- eight of them began 
by subscribing twopence a week each. The number of sub- 
scribers was afterwards increased to forty, and the weekly 
subscription to threepence. When they had got 28Z. they 
thought they had capital enough to begin their enterprise 
with. They took a small shop in a little back street, called 
Toad Lane, After the shop had been fitted up, the equitable 
pioneers had only 14Z. left to stock it ; and the concern looked 
so small and shabby that the hearts of some of the pioneers 
might have well-nigh sunk within them. A neighbouring 
shopkeeper, feeling utter contempt for the enterprise, declared 
that he could remove the whole stock-in-trade in a wheel- 
barrow. The wheelbarrow-load of goods soon, however, 
became too heavy to be carried away in the hold of a great 
steamer. The pioneers began by supplying each other with 
groceries ; they went on to butchers' meat, and then to all 
sorts of clothing. From supplying goods they progressed on 
to the manufacturing of goods ; they had a corn mill and a 
cotton mill, and they became to a certain extent a land and a 
building society. They set aside part of their profits for a 
library and reading-room, and they founded a co-operative 
Turkish bath. Their capital of 28Z. swelled in sixteen years 
to over 120,000Z. Cash payments and the division of profits 
were the main sources of this remarkable prosperity. Not 
merely did the shareholders share in the profits, but all the 
buyers received an equitable percentage on the price of every 
article they bought. Each purchaser, on paying for what he 
had bought, received a ticket which entitled him to that per- 
centage at each division of profit, and thus many a poor man 



326 A SHORT HISTORY OF CUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxii. 

found at the quarterly division that he had several shillings, 
perhaps a pound, coming to him, which seemed at first to 
have dropped out of the clouds, so little direct claim did he 
appear to have on it. He had not paid more for his goods 
than he would have had to pay at the cheapest shop ; he had 
got them of the best quality the price could buy ; and at the 
end of each period he found that he had a sum of money 
standing to his credit, which he could either take away or 
leave to accumulate at the store. 

Many other institutions were soon following the example oi 
the Eochdale pioneers. Long before their capital had swelled 
to the amount we have mentioned, the North of England was 
studded with co-operative associations of one kind or another. 
Many of them proved sad failures. Some started on chimerical 
principles ; some were stupidly, some selfishly mismanaged. 
There came seasons of heavy strain on labour and trade, when 
the resources of many were taxed to their uttermost, and when 
some even of the best seemed for a moment likely to go 
under. The co-operative associations suffered in fact the 
trials and vicissitudes that must be met by all institutions of 
men. But the one result is clear and palpable ; they have as 
a whole been a most remarkable success. Of late years the 
principle has been taken up by classes who would have 
appeared at one time to have little in common with the poor 
flannel- weavers of Eochdale. The civil servants of the Crown 
first adopted the idea ; and now in some of the most fashion- 
able quarters of London the carriages of some of their most 
fashionable residents are seen at the crowded doors of the co- 
operative store. It may safely be predicted that posterity will 
not let the co-operative principle die. It has taken firm hold 
of our modern society. It seems certainly destined to develop 
rather than fade ; to absorb rather than be absorbed. The 
law was much against the principle in the beginning. Before 
1852 all co-operative associations had to come under the 
Friendly Societies Act, which prohibited their dealing with 
any but their own members. An Act obtained in 1852 
allowed them to sell to persons not members of their body. 
For many years they were not permitted to hold more than 
an acre of land. More lately this absurd restriction was 
abolished, and they were allowed to trade in land, to hold 
land to any extent, and to act as building societies. The 
friendly societies, which were in their origin merely working- 
men's clubs, have been the subject of legislation since the 



CH. xxii. STRIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD. 327 

later years of the last century. It may be doubted whether, 
even up to this day, that legislation has not done them more 
harm than good. The law neither takes them fairly under its 
protection and control, nor leaves them to do the best they 
can for themselves uncontrolled and on their own responsi- 
bility. At one time the sort of left-handed recognition which 
the law gave them had a direct tendency to do harm. An 
officer was appointed by the Government, who might inspect 
the manner in which the accounts of the societies were kept, 
and certify that they were in conformity with the law ; but 
he had no authority to look actually into the affairs of a 
society. The mere, fact, however, that there was any manner 
of Government certificate proved sadly misleading to thou- 
sands of persons. Some actually regarded the certificate as a 
guarantee given by the Government that their money was 
safe ; a guarantee which bound the State to make good any 
loss to the depositors. Others, who were not quite so credu- 
lous, were convinced at least that the certificate testified on 
Government authority that the funds of the society were 
safe, and that its accounts and its business were managed on 
principles of strict economical soundness. The Government 
official certified nothing of the kind. The certificate given to 
the friendly societies merely certified that on the face of 
things the accounts seemed all right. Many of the societies 
were sadly mismanaged ; in certain of them there was the 
grossest malversation of funds ; in some towns much distress 
was caused among the depositors in consequence. The 
societies had to pass, in fact, through a stage of confusion, 
ignorance, and experiment, and it is perhaps only to be won- 
dered at that there was not greater mismanagement, greater 
blundering, and more lamentable failure. 

In the summer of 1867 England received with strange 
welcome a strange visitor. It was the Sultan of Turkey who 
came to visit England — the Sultan Abdul-Aziz, whose career 
was to end ten years after in dethronement and suicide. 
Abdul-Aziz was the first Sultan who ever set his foot on 
English soil. He was welcomed with a show of enthusiasm 
which made cool observers wonder and shrug their shoulders. 
There was an insurrection going on in the Greek island of 
Crete, which was under Turkish rule, and the Sultan's 
generals were doing cruel work among the unfortunate rebels 
of that Greek race with which the people of England had so 
long and so loudly professed the deepest sympathy. Yet the 



328 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxil. 

Sultan was received by Englishmen with what must have 
seemed to him a genuine outburst of national enthusiasm. 
As a matter of course he received the usual court entertain- 
ments ; but he was also entertained gorgeously by the Lord 
Mayor and Corporation of London; he went in state to 
the Opera and the Crystal Palace ; he saw a review of the 
fleet, in company with the Queen, at Spithead ; he was run 
after and shouted for by vast crowds wherever he showed his 
dark and melancholy face, on which even then the sullen 
shadow of the future might seem to have been cast. His 
presence threw completely into the background that of his 
nominal vassal the Viceroy of Egypt, who might otherwise 
have been a very sufficient lion in himself. Abdul-Aziz 
doubtless believed in the genuineness of the reception, and 
thought it denoted a real and lasting sympathy with him and 
his State. He did not know how easily crowds are gathered 
and the fire of popular enthusiasm is lighted in London. The 
Shah of Persia was to experience the same sort of reception 
not long after ; Garibaldi had enjoyed it not long before ; 
Kossuth had had it in his time. Some of the newspapers 
politely professed to believe that the visit would be productive 
of wonderful results to Turkey. The Sultan, it was suggested, 
would surely return to Constantinople with his head full of 
new ideas gathered up in the West. He would go back much 
impressed by the evidences of the blessings of our constitu- 
tional government, and the progressive nature of our civic 
institutions. He would read a lesson in the glass and iron 
of the Crystal Palace, the solid splendours of the Guildhall. 
He would learn something from the directors of the railway 
companies, and something from the Lord Mayor. The Cattle 
Show at the Agricultural Hall could not be lost on his obser- 
vant eyes. The result would be a new era for Turkey — 
another new era : the real new era this time. The poor 
Sultan's head must have been sadly bemused by all the various 
sights he was forced to see. He left England just before the 
public had had time to get tired of him ; and the new era did 
not appear to be any nearer for Turkey after his return home. 
Mr. Disraeli astonished and amused the public towards 
the close of 1867 by a declaration he made at a dinner which 
was given in his honour at Edinburgh. The company were 
surprised to learn that he had for many years been a thorough 
reformer and an advocate of popular suffrage, and that he had 
only kept his convictions to himself because it was necessary 



CH. xxii. STRIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD. 329 

to instil them gently into the minds of his political colleagues. 
' I had,' he said, ' to prepare the mind of the country, and to 
educate — if it be not arrogant to use such a phrase — to educate 
our party. It is a large party, and requires its attention to 
be called to questions of this kind with some pressure. I had 
to prepare the mind of Parliament and the country on this 
question of Eeform.' All the time, therefore, that Mr. 
Disraeli was fighting against Eeform Bills, he was really 
trying to lead his party towards the principles of populai 
reform. Some members of the party which Mr. Disraeli pro- 
fessed to have cleverly educated were a little scandalised and 
even shocked at the frank composure of his confession ; some 
were offended ; it seemed to them that their ingenious in- 
structor had made fools of them. But the general public, as 
usual, persisted in refusing to take Mr. Disraeli seriously, or 
to fasten on him any moral responsibility for anything he 
might say or do. That was his way ; if he were anything but 
that, he would not be Mr. Disraeli ; he would not be leader 
of the House of Commons ; he would not be Prime Minister 
of England. 

For to that it soon came ; came at last. Only the oppor- 
tunity was lately needed to make him Prime Minister ; and 
that opportunity came early in 1868. Lord Derby's health 
had for some time been so weakly that he was anxious to get 
rid of the trouble of office as soon as possible. In February 
1868 he became so ill that his condition excited the gravest 
anxiety. He rallied indeed and grew much better; but he 
took the warning and determined on retiring from office. He 
tendered his resignation, and it was accepted by the Queen. 
It fell to the lot of his son, Lord Stanley, to make the 
announcement in the House of Commons. There was a 
general regret felt for the retirement of Lord Derby from a 
leading place in politics ; but as soon as it appeared that his 
physical condition was not actually hopeless, men's minds 
turned at once from him to his successor. No one could now 
doubt that Mr. Disraeli's time had come. The patient career, 
the thirty years' war against difficulties, were to have the 
long-desired reward. The Queen sent for Mr. Disraeli, and 
invited him to assume Lord Derby's vacated place and to form 
a Government. By a curious coincidence the autograph 
letter containing this invitation was brought from Osborne to 
the new Prime Minister by General Grey, the man who de- 
feated Mr. Disraeli in his first endeavour to enter the House of 



330 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxii. 

Commons. That was the contest for Wycombe in June 1832. It 
was a memorable contest in many ways. It was the last election 
under the political conditions which the Eeform Bill brought 
to a close. The Eeform Bill had only just been passed when 
the Wycombe election took place, and had not come into 
actual operation. The state of the poll is amusing to read of 
now. Thirty-five voters all told registered their suffrages. 
Twenty-three voted for Colonel Grey, as he then was ; twelve 
were induced to support Mr. Disraeli. Then Mr. Disraeli 
retired from the contest, and Colonel Grey was proclaimed the 
representative of Wycombe by a majority of eleven. Nor had 
Wycombe exhausted in the contest all its electoral strength. 
There were, it seemed, two voters more in the borough who 
would have polled, if it were necessary, on the side of Colonel 
Grey. Mr. Disraeli's successful rival in that first struggle for 
a seat in Parliament was now the bearer of the Queen's invi- 
tation to Mr. Disraeli to become Prime Minister of England. 
The public in general were well pleased that Mr. Disraeli 
should reach the object of his ambition. It seemed only the 
fit return for his long and hard struggle against so many 
adverse conditions. He had battled with his evil stars ; and 
his triumph over them pleased most of those who had observed 
the contest. 

The new Premier made few changes in his Cabinet. His 
former lieutenant, Lord Cairns, had been for some time one of 
the Lords Justices of the Court of Chancery. Mr. Disraeli 
made him Lord Chancellor. In order to do this he had to 
undertake the somewhat ungracious task of informing Lord 
Chelmsford, who sat on the woolsack during Lord Derby's 
tenure of office, that his services would no longer be required. 
Lord Chelmsford's friends were very angry, and a painful con- 
troversy began in the newspapers. It was plainly stated by 
some of the aggrieved that Lord Chelmsford had been put 
aside because he had shown himself too firmly independent 
in his selection of judges. But there seems no reason to 
ascribe Mr. Disraeli's action to any other than its obvious and 
reasonable motive. His Ministry was singularly weak in 
debating talent in the House of Lords. Lord Cairns was one 
of the best parliamentary debaters of the day ; Lord Chelms- 
ford was hardly entitled to be called a Parliamentary debater 
at all. Lord Cairns was a really great lawyer ; Lord Chelms- 
ford was only a lawyer of respectable capacity. Lord Chelms- 
ford was at that time nearly seventy-five years old, and Lord 



CH. xxii. STRIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD. 331 

Cairns was a quarter of a century younger. It was surely not 
necessary to search for ungenerous or improper motives to 
explain the act of the new Prime Minister in preferring the 
one man to the other. Mr. Disraeli merely did his duty. 
Nothing could justify a Minister who had the opportunity and 
the responsibility of such a choice in deciding to retain Lord 
Chelmsford rather than to bring in Lord Cairns. 

No other change was important. Mr. Ward Hunt, a 
respectable country gentleman of no great position and of 
moderate abilities, became Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 
room of Mr. Disraeli. Mr. Walpole, who had been in the 
Cabinet for some time without office, retired from the Admi- 
nistration altogether. A good deal of work was got through 
in the session. A bill was introduced to put a stop to the 
system of public executions, and passed with little difficulty. 
The only objection raised was urged by those who thought 
the time had come for abolishing the system of capital punish- 
ment altogether. Public executions had long grown to be a 
scandal to the country. Every voice had been crying out 
against them. A public execution in London was a scene to 
fill an observer with something like a loathing for the whole 
human race. Through all the long night before the execution 
the precincts of the prison became a bivouac ground for the 
ruffianism of the metropolis. The roughs, the professional 
robbers, and the prospective murderers held high festival 
there. The air reeked with the smell of strong drink, with 
noise and oaths and blasphemy. The soul took its flight as if 
it were a trapeze-performer in a circus. The moral effect of 
the scene as an example to evil-doers was about as great as 
the moral effect of a cock-fight. The demoralising effect, 
however, was broad and deep. It may be doubted whether 
one in ten thousand of those who for mere curiosity came to 
see an execution did not go away a worse creature than he had 
come. Since the change made in 1868 the execution takes 
place within the precincts of the gaol ; it is witnessed by a few 
selected persons, usually including representatives of the press, 
and it is certified by the verdict of a coroner's jury. 

Another change of ancient system was made by the mea- 
sure which took away from the House of Commons the power 
of deciding election petitions. The long- established custom 
was, that an election petition was referred to a Committee of 
the House of Commons, who heard the evidence on both sides, 
and then decided by a majority of votes as to the right of the 



332 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxn. 

person elected to hold the seat. The system was open to 
some obvious objections. The one great and crying evil of our 
electioneering was then the bribery and corruption which 
attended it. A Parliamentary Committee could hardly be 
expected to deal very stringently with bribery, seeing that 
most of the members of the Committee were sure to have 
carried on or authorised bribery on their own account. A false 
public conscience had grown up with regard to bribery. Few 
men held it really in hatred. The country gentleman whose 
own vote, when once he had been elected, was unpurchasable 
by any money bribe, thought it quite a natural and legitimate 
thing that he should buy his seat by corrupting voters. Then 
again, the decision of a Parliamentary Committee was very 
often determined by the political opinions of the majority oi 
its members. Acute persons used to say, that when once the 
Committee had been formed they could tell what its decision 
would be. ' Show me the men and I'll show you the decision ' 
was the principle. It was not always found to be so in prac- 
tice. A Committee with a Conservative majority did some- 
times decide against a Conservative candidate. A Committee 
with a majority of Whigs has been known to unseat a Whig 
occupant. But in general the decision of the Committee was 
either influenced by the political opinions of its majority, or, 
what was nearly as bad so far as public opinion was con- 
cerned, it was believed to be so influenced. There had there- 
fore been for a long time an opinion growing up that some- 
thing must be done to bring about a reform, and in 1867 
a Parliamentary Select Committee reported in favour of 
abandoning altogether the system of referring election peti- 
tions to a tribunal composed of members of the House 
of Commons. The proposal of this Committee was, that 
every petition should be referred to one of the Judges 
of the superior courts at Westminster, with power to decide 
both law and fact, and to report not only as to the seat but 
as to the extent of bribery and corruption in the consti- 
tuency. The Judges themselves strongly objected to having 
such duties imposed upon them. The Lord Chief Justice 
stated on their behalf that he had consulted with them, and 
was charged by them one and all to convey to the Lord Chan- 
cellor ' their strong and unanimous feeling of insuperable 
objection to undertaking functions the effect of which would 
be to lower and degrade the judicial office, and to destroy, or 
at all events materially impair, the confidence of the public in 



CM. xxii. STRIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD. 333 

the thorough impartiality and inflexible integrity of the Judges, 
when in the course of their ordinary duties political matters 
come incidentally before them.' 

Notwithstanding the objections of the Judges, however, the 
Government, after having made one or two unsuccessful ex- 
periments at a measure to institute a new court for the trial 
of election petitions, brought in a bill to refer such petitions to 
a single Judge, selected from a list to be made by arrangement 
among the Judges of the three superior courts. This bill, 
which was to be in operation for three years as an experiment, 
was carried without much difficulty. It has been renewed since 
that time, and slightly altered. The principle of referring elec- 
tion petitions to the decision of a legal tribunal remains in force, 
and it is very unlikely indeed that the House of Commons will 
ever recover its ancient privilege. Many members of that House 
still regret the change. They say, and not unreasonably, that 
with time and the purifying effect of public opinion the objec- 
tions to the old system would have died away. A Committee 
of the House of Commons would have come to regard bribery 
as all honest and decent men must in time regard it. They 
would acknowledge it a crime and brand it accordingly. So 
too it is surely probable that members of the House of Com- 
mons sitting to hear an election petition would have got over 
that low condition of political morals which allowed them to 
give, or be suspected of giving, their decision for partisan 
purposes without regard to facts and to justice. It is right to 
say that none of the effects anticipated by the Chief Justice 
were felt in England. The impartiality of the Judges was 
never called in question. In Ireland it was otherwise, at 
least in some instances. Judges are rarely appointed in 
Ireland who have not held law office ; and law office is usually 
obtained by Parliamentary, in other words, by partisan service. 
There is not, therefore, always the same confidence in the im- 
partiality of the Judges in Ireland that prevails in England, 
and it must be owned that in one or two instances at least, 
the effect of referring an election petition to the decision of an 
Irish Judge was not by any means favourable to the public 
faith either in the dignity or impartiality of the Bench. Of 
late years some really stringent measures have been taken 
against bribery. Several boroughs have been disfranchised 
altogether because of the gross and seemingly ineradicable 
corruption that prevailed there. Time, education, and publio 
opinion will probably before long cleanse our political system 



334 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxii. 

of the stain of bribery. Before long surely it will be accounted 
as base to give as to take a bribe. 

The House of Lords too abandoned about this time one of • 
their ancient usages — the custom of voting by proxy. A 
Select Committee of the Peers had recommended that the 
practice should be discontinued. It was defended, of course, 
as every antiquated and anomalous practice is sure to be 
defended. It was urged, for example, that no men can be 
better qualified to understand the great political questions of 
the day than members of the House of Peers who are em- 
ployed in the diplomatic service abroad, and that it is unfair 
to exclude these men from affirming their opinion by a vote, 
even though they cannot quit their posts and return home to 
give the vote in person. This small grievance, if it were 
one, was very properly held to be of little account when com- 
pared with the obvious objections to the practice. The House 
of Lords, however, were not willing absolutely and for ever to 
give up the privilege. They only passed a standing order 
' that the practice of calling for proxies on a division be dis- 
continued, and that two days' notice be given of any motion 
for the suspension of the order.' It is not likely that any 
attempt will be made to suspend the order and renew the 
obsolete practice. 

The Government ventured this year on the bold but judi- 
cious step of acquiring possession of all the lines of telegraph, 
and making the control of communication by wire a part of 
the business of the Post Office. They did not succeed in 
making a very good bargain of it, and for a time the new 
management resulted in the most distracting confusion. But 
the country highly approved of the purchase. The Post 
Office has long been one of the best managed departments of 
the Civil Service. 

An important event in the year's history was the success- 
ful conclusion of the expedition into Abyssinia. A vague 
mysterious interest hung around Abyssinia. It is a land 
which claims to have held the primitive Christians, and to 
have the bones of St. Mark among its treasury of sacred 
relics. It held fast to the Christian faith, according to its own 
views of that faith, when Egypt flung it aside after the Arab 
invasion. The Abyssinians trace the origin of their empire 
back to the time of Solomon when the Queen of Sheba visited 
him. The Emperor or King of Abyssinia was the Prester 
John, the mysterious king-priest of the middle ages. If Si* 



CH. xxil. STRIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD. 335 

John Mandeville may be accepted as any authority, that 
traveller avers that the title of Prester John rose from the 
fact that one of the early kings of Abyssinia went with a 
Christian knight into a Christian church in Egypt and was so 
charmed with the service that he vowed he would thenceforth 
take the title of priest. He further declared, that ' he wolde 
have the name of the first preest that wente out of the 
Chirche ; and his name was John.' The controversy over 
Bruce's travels in Abyssinia excited in 1790 a curiosity as to 
the land of Prester John, which was revived in 1865 by the 
fact that a number of British subjects, men and women, were 
held in captivity by Theodore, King of Abyssinia. Among the 
captives in Theodore's hands were Captain Cameron, her 
Majesty's Consul at Massowah, with his secretary and some 
servants ; Mr. Hormuzd Bassam, a Syrian Christian and 
naturalised subject of the Queen ; Lieutenant Prideaux, and 
Dr. Blanc. These men were made prisoners while actually 
engaged on official business of the English Government, and 
the expedition was therefore formally charged to recover them. 
But there were several other captives as well, whom the 
Commander-in-Chief was enjoined to take under his protec- 
tion. There were German missionaries and their wives and 
children, some of the women being English ; some teachers, 
artists, and workmen, all European. The quarrel which led 
to the imprisonment of these people was of old standing. 
Some of the missionaries had been four years in duress 
before the expedition was sent out to their rescue. In April 
1865, Lord Chelmsford had called the attention of the House 
of Lords to the treatment which certain British subjects were 
then receiving at the hands of Theodore, the Negus or 
supreme ruler of Abyssinia. Theodore was a usurper. Few 
Eastern sovereigns who have in any way made their mark on 
history, from Haroun-al-Baschid and Saladin downwards, can 
be described by any other name than that of usurper. Theo- 
dore seems to have been a man of strong barbaric nature, a 
compound of savage virtue and more than savage ambition 
and cruelty. He was open to passionate and lasting friend- 
ships; his nature was swept by stormy gusts of anger and 
hatred. His moods of fury and of mildness came and went 
like the thunderstorms and calms of a tropic region. He had 
had a devoted friendship for Mr. Plowden, a former English 
Consul at Massowah, who had actually lent Theodore his help 
in putting down a rebellion, and was killed by the rebels in 



336 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. XXlk 

consequence. When Theodore had crushed the rebellion, he 
slaughtered more than a hundred of the rebel prisoners as a 
sacrifice to the memory of his English friend. Captain 
Cameron was sent to succeed Mr. Plowden. It should be 
stated that neither Mr. Plowden nor Captain Cameron was 
appointed Consul for any part of Abyssinia. Massowah is an 
island off the African shore of the Eed Sea. It is in Turkish 
ownership and forms no part of Abyssinia, although it is the 
principal starting point to the interior of that country from 
Egypt, and the great outlet for Abyssinian trade. Consuls 
were sent to Massowah, according to the terms of Mr. Plow- 
den's appointment in 1848, k for the protection of British 
trade with Abyssinia and with the countries adjacent thereto.' 
Mr. Plowden, however, had made himself an active ally of 
King Theodore, a course of proceeding which naturally gave 
great dissatisfaction to the English Government. Captain 
Cameron, therefore, received positive instructions to take no 
part in the quarrels of Theodore and his subjects, and was 
reminded by Lord John Eussell that he held ' no representa- 
tive character in Abyssinia.' It probably seemed to Theodore 
that the attitude of England was altered and unfriendly, and 
thus the dispute began which led to the seizure of the mis- 
sionaries. Captain Cameron seems to have been much want- 
ing in discretion, and Theodore suspected him of intriguing 
with Egypt. Theodore wrote a letter to Queen Victoria 
requesting help against the Turks, and for some reason the 
letter remained unanswered. A story went that Theodore 
cherished a strong ambition to become the husband of the 
Queen of England, and even represented that his descent 
from the Queen of Sheba made him not unworthy of such 
an alliance. Whether he ever put his proposals into formal 
shape or not, it is certain that misunderstandings arose ; that 
Theodore fancied himself slighted ; and that he wreaked his 
wrongs by seizing all the British subjects within his reach, 
and throwing them into captivity. They were put in chains, 
and kept in Magdala, his rock-based capital. Consul Cameron 
was among the number. He had imprudently gone back into 
Abyssinia from Massowah, and was at once pounced upon by 
the furious descendant of Prester John. 

The English Government had a difficult task before them. 
It seemed not unlikely that the first movement made by an 
invading expedition might be the signal for the massacre of 
the prisoners. The effect of conciliation was therefore tried 



CH. xxn. STRIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD, 337 

in the first instance. Mr. Eassam, who held the office of 
Assistant British Eesident at Aden, a man who had acquired 
some distinction under Mr. Layard in exploring the remains 
of Nineveh and Babylon, was sent on a mission to Theodore 
with a message from Queen Victoria. Lieutenant Prideaux 
and Dr. Blanc were appointed to accompany him. Theodore 
played with Mr. Bassam for a while, and then added him and 
his companions to the number of the captives. Theodore 
seems to have become more and more possessed with the idea 
that the English Government were slighting him ; and one or 
two unlucky mishaps or misconceptions gave him some 
excuse for cherishing the suspicion in his jealous and angry 
mind. At last an ultimatum was sent by Lord Stanley, 
demanding the release of the captives within three months on 
penalty of war. This letter does not seem to have ever 
reached the King's hands. The Government made prepara- 
tions for wan, and appointed Sir Bobert Napier, now Lord 
Napier of Magdala, then Commander-in-Chief of the army of 
Bombay, to conduct the expedition. A winter sitting of Par- 
liament was held in November 1867, supplies were voted, 
and the expeditionary force set out from Bombay. 

The expedition was well managed. Its work was, if we 
may use a somewhat homely expression, done to time. The 
military difficulties were not great, but the march had to be 
made across some four hundred miles of a mountainous and 
roadless country. The army had to make its way, now under 
burning sun, and now amidst storms of rain and sleet, 
through broken and perplexing mountain gorges and over 
mountain heights ten thousand feet above the sea level. Any- 
thing like a skilful resistance, even such resistance as savages 
might well have been expected to make, would have placed 
the lives of all the force in the utmost danger. The mere 
work of carrying the supplies safely along through such a 
country was of itself enough to keep the energies of the invad- 
ing army on the utmost strain. Meanwhile the captives were 
dragging out life in the very bitterness of death. The King 
still oscillated between caprices of kindness and impulses of 
cruelty. He sometimes strolled in upon the prisoners in care- 
less undress ; perhaps in European shirt and trousers, with- 
out a coat ; and he cheerily brought with him a bottle of 
wine, which he insisted on the captives sharing with him. At 
other times he visited them in the mood of one who loved to 
foast his eyes on the anticipatory terrors of the victims he has 

15 



3j8 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CM. xxil. 

determined to destroy. He had still great faith in the fighting 
power of his Abyssinians. Sometimes he was in high spirits, 
and declared that he longed for an encounter with the inva- 
ders. At other moments, however, and when the steady cer- 
tain march of the English soldiers was bringing them nearer 
and nearer, he seems to have lost heart and become impressed 
with a boding conviction that nothing would ever go well with 
him again. One account describes him as he looked into the 
gathering clouds of an evening sky and drew melancholy 
auguries of his own fate. Sir Eobert Napier arrived in front 
of Magdala in the beginning of April 1868. One battle was 
fought on the tenth of the month. Perhaps it ought not to be 
called a battle. It is better to say that the Abyssinians made 
such an attack on the English troops as a bull sometimes 
makes on a railway train in full motion. The Abyssinians 
attacked with wild courage and spirit. The English weapons 
and the English discipline simply swept the assailants away. 
Others came on ; wild charges were made again and again ; 
five hundred Abyssinians were killed, and three times as 
many wounded. Not one of the English force was killed, and 
only nineteen men were wounded. 

Then Theodore tried to come to terms. He sent back all 
the prisoners, who at last found themselves safe and free 
under the protection of the English flag. But Theodore would 
not surrender. Sir Eobert Napier had therefore no alternative 
but to order an assault on his stronghold. Magdala was 
perched upon cliffs so high and steep, that it was said a cat 
could not climb them except at two points — one north and 
one south — at each of which a narrow path led up to a strong 
gateway. The attack was made by the northern path, and 
despite all the difficulties of the ascent, the attacking party 
reached the gate, forced it, and captured Magdala. Those 
who first entered found Theodore's dead body inside the gate. 
Defeated and despairing he had died in the high Koman 
fashion : by his own hand. 

The rock-fortress of King Theodore was destroyed by the 
conqueror. Sir Eobert Napier was unwilling to leave the 
place in its strength, because he had little doubt that if he did 
so it would be seized upon by a fierce Mohammedan tribe, the 
bitter enemies of the Abyssinian Christians. He therefore dis- 
mantled and destroyed the place. ' Nothing,' to use his own 
language, 'but blackened rock remains' of what was Mag- 
dala. The expedition returned to the coast almost imme- 



CH. xxil. STRIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD, 339 

diately. In less than a week after the capture of Magdala it 
was on its march to the sea. On June 21 the troopship 
Crocodile arrived at Plymouth with the first detachment of 
troops from Abyssinia. Nothing could have been more effec- 
tively planned, conducted, and timed than the whole expedi- 
tion. It went and came to the precise moment appointed for 
every movement, like an express tram. That was its great 
merit. Warlike difficulties it had none to encounter. No 
one can doubt that such difficulties too, had they presented 
themselves, would have been encountered with success. The 
struggle was against two tough enemies, climate and moun- 
tain; and Sir Eobert Napier won. He was made Baron 
Napier of Magdala, and received a pension. The thanks of 
both Houses of Parliament were voted to the army of Abys- 
sinia and its commander. 

The widow of King Theodore died in the English camp 
before the return of the expedition. Theodore's son, Alama- 
you, aged seven years, was taken charge of by Queen Victoria, 
and for a while educated in India. The boy was afterwards 
brought to England ; but he never reached maturity. All the 
care that could be taken of him here did not keep him from 
withering and dying under the influence of an uncongenial 
civilisation. No attempt was made to interfere with the in- 
ternal affairs of Abyssinia. Having destroyed their monarchy, 
the invaders left the Abyssinians to do as they would for the 
establishment of another. Sir Eobert Napier declared one of 
the chiefs a friend of the British, and this chief had some 
hopes of obtaining the sovereignty of the country. But his 
rank as a friend of the British did not prevent him from being 
defeated in a struggle with a rival, and this latter not long 
after succeeded in having himself crowned king under the 
title of John the Second. Another Prester John was set up 
in Abyssinia. 

CHAPTEE XXIII. 

IRISH QUESTIONS. 

4 The Irish Peasant to his Mistress ' is the name of one of 
Moore's finest songs. The Irish peasant tells his mistress of 
his undying fidelity to her. ' Through griei and through 
danger ' her smile has cheered his way. ' The darker our for- 
tunes the purer thy bright love burned ' ; it turned shame into 



340 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxm. 

glory ; fear into zeal. Slave as he was, with her to guide him 
he felt free. She had a rival ; and the rival was honoured, 
* while thou wert mocked and scorned.' The rival wore a 
crown of gold ; the other's brows were girt with thorns. The 
rival wooed him to temples, while the loved one lay hid in 
caves. * Her friends were all masters, while thine, alas, are 
slaves I ' ' Yet,' he declares, ' cold in the earth at thy feet I 
would rather be than wed one I love not, or turn one thought 
from thee.' 

The Irish peasant's mistress is the Catholic Church. The 
rival was the State Church set up by English authority. The 
Irish peasant remained through centuries of persecution 
devotedly faithful to the Catholic Church. Nothing could win 
or wean him from it. The Irish population of Ireland — there 
is meaning in the words — were made apparently by nature for 
the Catholic faith. Half the thoughts, half the life of the Irish 
peasant, belong to a world other than the material world around 
him. The supernatural becomes almost the natural for him. 
The streams, the valleys, the hills of his native country are 
peopled by mystic forms and melancholy legends, which are 
all but living things for him. Even the railway has not 
banished from the land his familiar fancies and dreams. The 
' good people ' still linger around the raths and glens. The 
banshee even yet laments, in dirge-like wailings, the death of 
the representative of each ancient house. The very super- 
stitions of the Irish peasant take a devotional form. They are 
never degrading. His piety is not merely sincere : it is even 
practical. It sustains him against many hard trials, and 
enables him to bear, in cheerful patience, a lifelong trouble. 
He praises God for everything ; not as an act of mere devo- 
tional formality, but as by instinct ; the praise naturally 
rising to his lips. Old men and women in Ireland who seem, 
to the observer, to have lived lives of nothing but privation 
and suffering, are heard to murmur with their latest breath 
the fervent declaration that the Lord was good to them 
always. Assuredly this genuine piety does not always prevent 
the wild Celtic nature from breaking forth into fierce excesses. 
Stormy outbursts of passion, gusts of savage revenge, too 
often sweep away the soul of the Irish peasant from the quiet 
moorings in which his natural piety and the teachings of his 
Church would hold it. But deep down in his nature is that 
faith in the other world and its visible connection and inter- 
course with this ; his reverence for the teaching which shows 



Ctt. xxiil. IRISH QUESTIONS. 341 

him a clear title to immortality. For this very reason, -when 
the Irish peasant throws off altogether the guidance of reli- 
gion, he is apt to rush into worse extravagances and excesses 
than most other men. He is not made to be a rationalist ; he 
is made to be a believer. 

The Irishman was bound by ties of indescribable strength 
and complication to his own Church. The State Church set 
up in Ireland was to him a symbol of oppression. There was 
not one rational word to be said on principle for the mainten- 
ance of such an institution. Every argument in favour of the 
State Church in England was an argument against the State 
Church in Ireland. The English Church, as an institution, 
is defended on the ground that it represents the religious con- 
victions of the great majority of the English people, and that 
it is qualified to take welcome charge of those who would 
otherwise be left without any religious care or teaching in 
England. The Catholics in Ireland were, to all other deno- 
minations together, as five to one ; the State Church repre- 
sented only a small proportion of a very small minority. In 
many places the Protestant clergyman preached to a dozen 
listeners ; in some places he thought himself lucky when he 
could get half a dozen. There were many places with a Pro- 
testant clergyman and Protestant church and absolutely no 
Protestant worshippers. There had not of late years been 
much positive hostility to the State Church among the Irish 
people. So long as the clergyman was content to live quietly 
and mind his own flock, where he had any to mind, his 
Catholic neighbours were not disposed to trouble themselves 
much about him. If he was a sensible man he was usually 
content to minister to his own people and meddle no further 
with others. In the large towns he generally had his consi- 
derable congregation, and was busy enough. In some of the 
country places of the south and west he preached every 
Sunday to his little flock of five or six, while the congregation 
of the Catholic chapel a short distance off were covering great 
part of the hillside around the chapel door, because their 
numbers were many times too great to allow them to find 
room within the building itself. In days nearer to our own 
the miserable hovel had for the most part given place to a 
large and handsome church ; in many places to a vast and 
stately cathedral. Nothing could be more remarkable than 
the manner in which the voluntary offerings of the Irish 
Catholics covered the face of the country with churches dedi- 



342 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxiil. 

cated to the uses of their faith. Often contributions came in 
liberal measure from Irishmen settled in far-off countries who 
were not likely ever again to see their native fields. Irish 
Catholic priests crossed the Atlantic, crossed even the Pacific, 
to ask for help to maintain their churches ; and there came 
from Quebec and Ontario, from New York, New Orleans and 
Chicago, from Melbourne and Sydney, from Tasmania and 
New Zealand, the money which put up churches and spires 
on the Irish mountain- sides. The proportion between the Pro- 
testants and the Catholics began to tell more and more dis- 
advantageously for the State Church as years went on. Of 
late the influx of the Catholic working population into the 
northern province threatens to overthrow the supremacy of 
Protestantism in Protestantism's own stronghold. 

On March 16, 1868, a remarkable debate took place in the 
House of Commons. It had for its subject the condition of 
Ireland, and it was introduced by a series of resolutions which 
Mr. John Francis Maguire, an Irish member, proposed. Mr. 
Maguire was a man of high character and great ability and 
earnestness. He was a newspaper proprietor and an author ; 
he knew Ireland well, but he also knew England and the 
temper of the English people. He was ardent in his national 
sympathies ; but he was opposed to any movements of a sedi- 
tious or a violent character. He had more than once risked his 
popularity among his countrymen by the resolute stand which 
he made against any agitation that tended towards rebellion. 
Mr. Maguire always held that the geographical situation of 
England and Ireland rendered a separation of the two coun- 
tries impossible. But he accepted cordially the saying of 
Grattan, that if the ocean forbade separation, the sea denied 
union. He was in favour of a domestic legislature for Ireland, 
and he was convinced that such a measure would be found the 
means of establishing a true and genial union of feeling, a 
friendly partnership between the two countries. Mr. Maguire 
was looked on with respect and confidence by all parties in 
England as well as in his own country. Even the Fenians, 
whose schemes he condemned as he had condemned the 
Young Ireland movement of 1848, were willing to admit his 
honesty and his courage, for they found that there was no 
stauncher advocate in Parliament for a generous dealing with 
the Fenian prisoners. A speaker of remarkable power and ear- 
nestness, he was always listened to with attention in the House 
of Commons. It was well known that he had declined tenders 



CH. xxiii. IRISH QUESTION'S, 343 

of office from both of the great English parties ; and it was 
known too that he had done this at a time when his personal 
interests made his refusal a considerable sacrifice. When 
therefore he invited the attention of the House of Commons to 
the condition of Ireland, the House knew that it was likely to 
have a fair and a trustworthy exposition of the subject. 

In the course of his speech Mr. Maguire laid great stress 
upon the evil effect wrought upon Ireland by the existence of 
the Irish Church. During the debate Lord Mayo, then Irish 
Secretary, made a speech in which he threw out some hint 
about a policy of equalising all religious denominations in 
Ireland without sacrificing the Irish Church. It has never 
since been known for certain whether he was giving a hint of 
a scheme actually in the mind of the Government ; whether 
he was speaking as one set up to feel his way into the opinion 
of the House of Commons and the public ; or whether he was 
only following out some sudden and irresponsible speculations 
of his own. The words, however, produced a great effect on 
the House of Commons. It became evident at once that the 
question of the Irish Church was making itself at last a subject 
for the practical politician. Mr. Bright, in the course of the 
debate, strongly denounced the Irish Establishment, and en- 
joined the Government and all the great English parties to rise 
to the occasion, and resolve to deal in some serious way with 
the condition of Ireland. Difficulties of the gravest nature 
he fully admitted were yet in the way, but he reminded the 
House, in tones of solemn and penetrating earnestness, that 
' to the upright there ariseth light in the darkness.' But it 
was on the fourth night of the debate that the importance of 
the occasion became fully manifest. Then it was that Mr. 
Gladstone spoke, and declared that in his opinion the time 
had come when the Irish Church as a State institution must 
cease to exist. Then every man in the House knew that the end 
was near. Mr. Maguire withdrew his resolutions. The cause 
he had to serve was now in the hands of one who, though not 
surely more earnest for its success, had incomparably greater 
power to serve it. There was probably not a single English- 
man capable of forming an opinion who did not know that 
from the moment when Mr. Gladstone made his declaration, 
the fall of the Irish State Church had become merely a ques- 
tion of time. Men only waited to see how Mr. Gladstone 
would proceed to procure its fall. 

Public expectation was not long kept in suspense. A few 



344 4 SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxih. 

days after the debate on Mr. Maguire's motion, Mr. Gladstone 
gave notice of three resolutions on the subject of the Irish 
State Church. The first declared that in the opinion of the 
House of Commons it was necessary that the Established 
Church of Ireland should cease to exist as an Establishment, 
due regard being had to all personal interests and to all indi- 
vidual rights of property. The second resolution pronounced 
it expedient to prevent the creation of new personal interests 
by the exercise of any public patronage ; and the third asked 
for an address to the Queen, praying that her Majesty would 
place at the disposal of Parliament her interest in the tempo- 
ralities of the Irish Church. The object of these resolutions 
was simply to prepare for the actual disestablishment of the 
Church, by providing that no further appointments should be 
made, and that the action of patronage should be stayed, until 
Parliament should decide the fate of the whole institution. 
On March 30, 1868, Mr. Gladstone proposed his resolutions. 
Not many persons could have had much doubt as to the result 
of the debate. But if there were any such, their doubts must 
have begun to vanish when they read the notice of amendment 
to the resolutions which was given by Lord Stanley. The 
amendment proclaimed even more surely than the resolutions 
the impending fall of the Irish Church. Lord Stanley must 
have been supposed to speak in the name of the Government 
and the Conservative party ; and his amendment merely 
declared that the House, while admitting that considerable 
modifications in the temporalities of the Church in Ireland 
might appear to be expedient, was of opinion ' that any pro- 
position tending to the disestablishment or disendowment of 
that Church ought to be reserved for the decision of the new 
Parliament.' Lord Stanley's amendment asked only for delay. 
It did not plead that to-morrow would be sudden ; it only 
asked that the stroke of doom should not be allowed to fall on 
the Irish Church to-day. 

The debate was one of great power and interest. Some 
of the speakers were heard at their very best. Mr. Bright 
made a speech which was well worthy of the occasion and the 
orator. Mr. Gathorne Hardy was in his very element. He 
flung aside all consideration of amendment, compromise, or 
delay, and went in for a vehement defence of the Irish Church. 
Mr. Hardy was not a debater of keen logical power nor an 
orator of genuine inspiration, but he always could rattle a 
defiant drum with excellent effect. He beat the war-drum 



CH. xxiil. IRISH QUESTIONS. 345 

this time with tremendous energy. On the other hand, Mr. 
Lowe threw an intensity of bitterness remarkable even for him 
into the unsparing logic with which he assailed the Irish 
Church. That Church, he said, was ' like an exotic brought 
from a far country, tended with infinite pains and useless 
trouble. It is kept alive with the greatest difficulty and at 
great expense in an ungenial climate and an ungrateful soil. 
The curse of barrenness is upon it. It has no leaves, puts 
forth no blossom, and yields no fruit. Cut it down ; why 
cumbereth it the ground ? ' Not the least remarkable speech 
of the debate was that made by Lord Cranborne, who de- 
nounced the Government of which he was not long since a 
member with an energy of hatred almost like ferocity. He 
accused his late colleagues of having in every possible way 
betrayed the cause of Conservatism, and he assailed Mr. 
Disraeli personally in a manner which made older members 
think of the days when Mr. Disraeli was denouncing Sir 
Robert Peel. No eloquence and no invective however could 
stay the movement begun by Mr. Gladstone. When the 
division was called there were 270 votes for the amendment, 
and 331 against it. The doom of the Irish Church was pro- 
nounced by a majority of 61. An interval was afforded for 
agitation on both sides. The House of Commons had only 
decided against Lord Stanley's amendment. Mr. Gladstone's 
resolutions had yet to be discussed. Lord Kussell presided at 
a great meeting held in St. James's Hall for the purpose of 
expressing public sympathy with the movement to disestablish 
the Irish Church. Many meetings were held by those on the 
other side of the question as well; but it was obvious to 
everyone that there was no great force in the attempt at a 
defence of the Irish Church. That institution had in truth a 
position which only became less and less defensible the more 
it was studied. Every example and argument drawn from the 
history of the Church of England was but another condemna- 
tion of the Church of Ireland. The more strongly an English- 
man was inclined to support his own Church, the more anxious 
he ought to have been to repudiate the claim of the Irish 
Church to a similar position. 

Mr. Gladstone's first resolution came to a division about a 
month after the defeat of Lord Stanley's amendment. It was 
/carried by a majority somewhat larger than that which had 
rejected the amendment — 380 votes were given for the reso- 
lution ; 265 against it. The majority for the resolution wag 

15* 



346 A SHORT HISTORY OF ODR OWN TIMES, ch. xxm. 

therefore 65. Mr. Disraeli quietly observed that the Govern- 
ment must take some decisive step in consequence of that vote ; 
and a few days afterwards it was announced that as soon as the 
necessary business could be got through, Parliament would 
be dissolved and an appeal made to the country. On the 
last day of July the dissolution took place, and the elections 
came on in November. Not for many years had there been 
so important a general election. The keenest anxiety pre- 
vailed as to its results. The new constituencies created by 
the Eeform Bill were to give their votes for the first time. 
The question at issue was not merely the existence of the 
Irish State Church. It was a general struggle of advanced 
Liberalism against Toryism. No one could doubt that Mr. 
Gladstone, it he came into power, would enter on a policy of 
more decided Liberalism than had ever been put into action 
since the days of the Eeform Bill of Lord Grey and Lord John 
Kussell. The result of the elections was on the whole what 
might have been expected. The Liberals had a great majority. 
But there were many curious and striking instances of the 
growing strength of Conservatism in certain parts of the 
country. Lancashire, once a very stronghold of Liberalism, 
returned only Tories for its county divisions, and even in most 
cases elected Tories to represent its boroughs. Eight Conser- 
vatives came in for the county of Lancaster, and among those 
whom their election displaced were no less eminent persons 
than Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hartington. Mr. Gladstone 
was defeated in South-west Lancashire, but the result of the 
contest had been generally anticipated, and therefore some of 
his supporters put him up for Greenwich also, and he was 
elected there. He had been passing step by step from less 
popular to more popular constituencies. From the University 
of Oxford he had passed to the Lancashire division, and now 
from the Lancashire constituency he went on to a place where 
the Liberal portion of the electors were inclined, for the most 
part, to be not merely Eadical but democratic. 

The contest in North Lancashire was made more interesting 
than it would otherwise have been by the fact that it was not 
alone a struggle between opposing principles and parties, but 
also between two great rival houses. Lord Hartington repre- 
sented the great Cavendish family. Mr. Frederick Stanley 
was the younger son of Lord Derby. Lord Hartington was 
defeated by a large majority, and was left out of Parliament 
for a few months. He was afterwards elected for the Eadnor 



CH. xxiii. IRISH' QUESTIONS. 347 



Boroughs. Mr. Mill was defeated at Westminster. His 
defeat was brought about by a combination of causes. He 
had been elected in a moment of sudden enthusiasm, and the 
enthusiasm had now had time to cool away. He had given some 
offence in various quarters by a too great independence of action 
and of expression. On many questions of deep interest he 
had shown that he was entirely out of harmony with the 
views of the vast majority of his constituents, whatever their 
religious denomination might be. He had done some things 
which people called eccentric, and an English popular con- 
stituency does not love eccentricity. His opponent, Mr. 
W. H. Smith, was very popular in Westminster, and had been 
quietly canvassing it for years. Some of the Westminster 
electors had probably grown tired of being represented by 
one who was called a philosopher. Some other prominent 
public men lost their seats. Mr. Eoebuck was defeated in 
Sheffield. His defeat was partly due to the strong stand he 
had made against the trades-unions ; but still more to the 
bitterness of the hostility he had shown to the Northern States 
during the American Civil War. Mr. Milner Gibson and Mr, 
Bernal Osborne were also unseated. The latter got into Par- 
liament again. The former disappeared from public life. He 
had done good service at one time as an ally of Cobden and 
Bright. Mr. Lowe was elected the first representative of the 
University of London, on which the Conservative Keform Bill 
had conferred a seat. Mr. Disraeli afterwards humorously 
claimed the credit of having enabled Mr. Lowe to carry on 
his public career by providing for him the only constituency 
in England which would have accepted him as its represen- 
tative. This was the first general election with household 
suffrage in boroughs and a lowered franchise in counties. 
Yet curiously enough the extreme democratic candidates, 
and those who were called the working-men's candidates, were 
in every instance rejected. The new Parliament was to all 
appearance less marked in its Liberalism than that which had 
gone before it. But so far as mere numbers went the Liberal 
party was much stronger than it had been. In the new 
House of Commons it could count upon a majority of about 
120, whereas in the late Parliament it had but 60. Mr. 
Gladstone it was clear would now have everything in his own 
hands, and the country might look for a career of energetic 
reform. 

While the debates on Mr. Gladstone's resolutions wero 



348 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxith 

still going on, there came to England the news that Lord 
Brougham was dead. He had died at Cannes in his ninetieth 
year. His death was a quiet passing away from a world that 
had well-nigh forgotten him. Seldom has a political career 
been so strangely cut short as that of Lord Brougham. From 
the time when the Whig Administration was formed without 
him, he seemed to have no particular business in public life. 
He never had from that hour the slightest influence on any 
political party or any political movement. His restless figure 
was seen moving about the House of Lords like that of a man 
who felt himself out of place there, and was therefore out of 
humour with himself and his company. He often took part 
in debate, and for many years he continued to show all the 
fire and energy of his earlier days. But of late he had almost 
entirely dropped out of politics. Happily for him the Social 
Science Association was formed, and he acted for a long time 
as its principal guide, philosopher, and friend. He made 
speeches at its meetings, presided at many of its banquets, and 
sometimes showed that he could still command the resources 
of a massive eloquence. The men of the younger generation 
looked at him with interest and wonder ; they found it hard 
to realise the fact that only a few years before he was one of 
the most conspicuous and energetic figures in political agita- 
tion. Now he seemed oddly like some dethroned king who 
occupies his leisure in botanical studies ; some once famoua 
commander, long out of harness, who amuses himself with 
learning the flute. There were perhaps some who forgot 
Brougham the great reformer altogether, and only thought of 
Brougham the patron and orator of the Social Science Asso- 
ciation. He passed his time between Cannes, which he may 
be said to have discovered, and London. At one time he had 
had the idea of actually becoming a citizen of France, being 
of opinion that it would set a good example for the brother- 
hood of peoples if he were to show how a man could be a 
French and an English citizen at the same moment. He had 
outlived nearly all his early friends and foes. Melbourne, 
Grey, Durham, Campbell, Lyndhurst had passed away. The 
death of Lyndhurst had been a great grief to him. It is said 
that in his failing, later years he often directed his coachman 
to drive him to Lord Lyndhurst 's house, as if his old friend 
and gossip were still among the living. At last Brougham 
began to give unmistakable signs of vanishing intelligence. 
His appearances in public were mournful exhibitions. He 



CH. xxiii. IRISH QUESTIONS. 349 

sometimes sat at a dinner-party and talked loudly to him- 
self of something which had no concern with the time, the 
place, or the company. His death created but a mere mo- 
mentary thrill of emotion in England. He had made bitter 
enemies and cherished strong hatreds in his active years ; and 
like all men who have strong hatreds, he had warm affections 
too. But the close friends and the bitter enemies were gone 
alike ; and the agitation about the Irish Church was scarcely 
interrupted for a moment by the news of his death. 

The Parliament which was called together in the close of 
1868 was known to have before it the great task of endeavour- 
ing to govern Ireland on the principle enunciated by Fox 
seventy years before — that is, according to Irish ideas. Mr. 
Gladstone had proclaimed this purpose himself. He had made 
it known that he would endeavour to deal with Ireland's three 
great difficulties — the State Church, the tenure of land, and the 
system of university education. Men's minds were wrought up 
to the enterprise. The country was in a temper to try heroic 
remedies. The public were tired of government which merely 
tinkered at legislation, putting in a little patch here, and 
stopping up for the moment a little hole there. Perhaps, 
therefore, there was a certain disappointment as the general 
character of the new Parliament began to be understood. 
The eminent men on whom all eyes turned in the old Par- 
liament were to be seen of all eyes in the new. It was clear 
that Mr. Gladstone would be master of the situation. But 
there did not seem anything particularly hero-like in the 
general aspect of the new House of Commons. Its com- 
position was very much the same as that of the old. Vast 
sums of money had been spent upon the elections. Bich men 
were, as before, in immense preponderance. Elder and 
younger sons of great families were as many as ever. The 
English constituencies under the new suffrage were evi- 
dently no whit less fond of lords, no whit less devoted to 
wealth, than they had been under the old. Not a single man 
of extreme democratic opinions had a seat in the new House 
of Commons. Where any marked change had been made it 
showed itself in removing such men from Parliament rather 
than in returning them to it. 

Mr. Disraeli did not meet the new Parliament as Prime 
Minister. He decided very properly that it would be a mere 
waste of public time to wait for the formal vote of the House 
©f Commons, which would inevitably command him to sur- 



350 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxm. 

render. He at once resigned Ids office, and Mr. Gladstone 
was immediately sent for by the Queen, and invited to form 
an Administration. Mr. Gladstone, it would seem, was only 
beginning his career. He was nearly sixty years of age, but 
there were scarcely any evidences of advancing years to be 
seen on his face, and he had all the fire of proud, indomitable 
youth in his voice and his manner. He had come into office 
at the head of a powerful party. There was hardly anything 
he could not do with such a following and with such personal 
energy. The Government he formed was one of remarkable 
strength. The one name upon its list, after that of the Prime 
Minister himself, which engaged the interest of the public, 
was that of Mr. Bright. Mr. Bright had not sought office, 
it had come to him. It was impossible that a Liberal 
ministry could now be formed without Mr. Bright's name 
appearing in it. Mr. Gladstone at first offered him the office 
of Secretary of State for India. The state of Mr. Bright's 
health would not allow him to undertake the very laborious 
duties of such a place, and probably in any case it would have 
been repugnant to his feelings to accept a position which 
might have called on him to give orders for the undertaking 
of a war. Every man in a Cabinet is of course responsible 
for all its acts ; but there is still an evident difference, so far 
as personal feeling is concerned, between acquiescing in some 
inevitable policy of war and actually directing that war shall 
be made. The position of President of the Board of Trade 
was that which had been offered by Lord Palmerston to Mr. 
Bright's old friend, Bichard Cobden, and it seemed in every 
way well suited to Mr. Bright himself. Many men felt a doubt 
as to the possibility of Mr. Bright's subduing his personal 
independence and his outspoken ways to the discipline and 
reticence of a Cabinet, and Mr. Bright himself appeared to 
be a little afraid that he should be understood as thoroughly 
approving of every measure in which he might, by official 
order, feel compelled to acquiesce. He cautioned his Birming- 
ham constituents not to believe that he had changed any of his 
opinions until his own voice publicly proclaimed the change, 
and he made what might almost be called an appeal to them 
to remember that he was now one man serving in a band of 
men ; no longer responsible only for himself, no longer inde- 
pendent of the acts of others. 

Lord Granville was Secretary for the Colonies under the 
»ew Administration; Lord Clarendon Foreign Secretary, 



CH. xxill. IRISH QUESTIONS. 351 

The Duke of Argyll was entrusted with the Indian Office. 
Mr. Cardwell, to all appearance one of the coldest and least 
warlike of men, was made Secretary for War, and had in his 
charge one of the greatest reforms of the administration. Lord 
Hartington, Lord Dufferin, Mr. Guilders, and Mr. Bruce had 
places assigned to them. Mr. Layard became First Com- 
missioner of Public Works. Mr. W. E. Forster had the office 
of Vice-President of the Council, and came in for work hardly 
less important than that of the Prime Minister himself. The 
Lord Chancellor was Lord Hatherley, formerly Sir William 
Page Wood. Many years before, when Lord Hatherley was 
only known as a rising man among advanced Liberals, and 
when Mr. Bright was still regarded by all true Conservatives 
as a Badical demagogue, Mr. Bright and Mr. Wood were 
talking of the political possibilities of the future. Mr. Bright 
jestingly expressed a hope that whenever he came to be member 
of a Cabinet, Mr. Wood might be the Lord Chancellor. 
Nothing could then have seemed less likely to come to pass. 
As Lord Hatherley and Mr. Bright met on their way to 
Windsor to wait on the Queen, Mr. Bright reminded his 
colleague of the jest that had apparently been prophetic. 

Mr. Gladstone went to work at once with his Irish policy. 
On March 1, 1869, the Prime Minister introduced his measure 
for the disestablishment and partial disendowment of the Irish 
State Church. The proposals of the Government were, that the 
Irish Church should almost at once cease to exist as a State 
Establishment, and should pass into the condition of a free 
Episcopal Church. As a matter of course the Irish bishops 
were to lose their seats in the House of Lords. A synodal, 
or governing body, was to be elected from the clergy and laity 
of the Church and was to be recognised by the Government, 
and duly incorporated. The union between the Churches of 
England and Ireland was to be dissolved, and the Irish Eccle- 
siastical Courts were to be abolished. There were various 
and complicated arrangements for the protection of the life 
interests of those already holding positions in the Irish 
Church, and for the appropriation of the fund which would 
return to the possession of the State when all these interests 
had been fairly considered and dealt with. It must be owned 
that the Government dealt with vested interests in no niggard 
spirit. If they erred at all they erred on the side of too much 
generosity. But they had arrayed against them adversaries 
ro strong that they probably felt it absolutely necessary to 



352 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxill. 

buy off some of the opposition by a liberal compensation to 
all those who were to be deprived of their dignity as clergy- 
men of a State Church. When, however, all had been paid 
off who could establish any claim, and some perhaps who had 
in strict fairness no claim whatever, there remained a large 
fund at the disposal of the Government. This they resolved 
to set apart for the relief of unavoidable suffering in Ireland. 

The sum to be disposed of was very considerable. The 
gross value of the Irish Church property was estimated at 
sixteen millions. From this sum would have to be deducted 
nearly five millions for the vested interests of incumbents ; one 
million seven hundred thousand for compensations to curates 
and lay compensations ; half a million for private endowments; 
for the Maynooth Grant and the Eegium Donum about a 
million and a quarter. There would be left nearly nine mil- 
lions for any beneficent purpose on which the Government 
and the country could make up their minds. The Maynooth 
Grant and the Eegium Donum were to go with the Irish 
Church, and the same principle of compensation was to be 
applied to those who were to be deprived of them. The 
Eegium Donum was an allowance from the Sovereign for the 
maintenance of Presbyterian ministers in Ireland. It was 
begun by Charles II. and let drop by James, but was restored 
by William III. William felt gratetul for the support given 
him by the Presbyterians in Ireland during his contest with 
James, and indeed had little preference for one form of the 
Protestant faith over another. William, in the first instance, 
fixed the grant as a charge upon the customs of Belfast. 
The Maynooth Grant has been already described in these 
pages. Both these grants, each a very small thing in itself, 
now came to an end, and the principle of equality among the 
religious denominations of Ireland was to be established. 

The bill was stoutly resisted by Mr. Disraeli and his party. 
They resisted it as a whole, and they also fought it in detail. 
They proposed amendment after amendment in committee, and 
did all they could to stay its progress as well as to alter some 
of its arrangements. But there did not seem to be much of 
genuine earnestness in the speeches made by Mr. Disraeli, 
The fact that resistance was evidently hopeless had no doubt 
some effect upon the style of his eloquence. His speeches were 
amusing rather than impressive. They were full of good 
points ; they sparkled with happy illustrations and allusions, 
odd conceits and bewildering paradoxes. But the orator had 



CH. xxiii. IRISH QUESTION'S. 353 

evidently no faith in the cause he advocated ; no faith, that i3 
to say, in the possibility of its success. He must have seen 
too clearly that the Church as a State establishment in Ireland 
was doomed, and he had not that intensity of interest in its 
maintenance which would have made hi™ fight the course, as 
he had fought many a course before, with all the passionate 
eloquence of desperation. One of his lieutenants, Mr. Gathorne 
Hardy, was more effective as a champion of the sinking Irish 
Church than Mr. Disraeli proved himself to be. Mr. Hardy 
was a man so constituted as to be only capable of seeing one 
side of a question at a time. He was filled with the convic- 
tion that the Government were attempting an act of spoliation 
and sacrilege, and he stormed against the meditated crime 
with a genuine energy which occasionally seemed to supply 
him with something like eloquence. A peculiar interest at- 
tached to the part taken in the debate by Sir Eoundell Palmer. 
It was natural that Sir Koundell Palmer should be with Mr. 
Gladstone. Everyone expected in the first instance that he 
would have held high office in the new Administration. He 
was one of the very foremost lawyers and the best Parliamen- 
tary debaters of the day, and the woolsack seemed to be his 
fitting place. But Sir Eoundell Palmer could not conscien- 
tiously agree to the disestablishment of the Irish State Church. 
He was willing to consent to very extensive alterations and 
reductions in the Establishment, but he could not go with 
Mr. Gladstone all the way to the abolition of the Church ; and 
he therefore remained outside the Ministry, and opposed the 
bill. If the fate of the Irish Church could have been averted 
or even postponed by impassioned eloquence something might 
have been done to stay the stroke of doom. But the fate of 
the institution was sealed at the moment that Mr. Gladstone 
returned from the general elections in command of a Liberal 
majority. The House of Lords were prudent enough not to 
set themselves against the clear declaration of national opinion. 
Many amendments were introduced and discussed ; and some 
of these led to a controversy between the two Houses of Parlia- 
ment ; but the controversy ended in compromise. On July 26, 
1869, the measure for the disestablishment of the Irish Church 
received the royal assent. 

Lord Derby did not long survive the passing of the measure 
which he had opposed with such fervour and so much pathetic 
dignity. He died before the Irish State Church had ceased 
to live. Doomed as it was, it outlasted its eloquent champion. 



354 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxill. 

In the interval between the passing and the practical operation 
of Mr. Gladstone's bill, on October 23, Lord Derby died at 
Knowsley, the residence of the Stanleys in Lancashire. Hia 
death made no great gap in English politics. He had for 
some time ceased to assert any really influential place in public 
affairs. His career had been eminent and distinguished ; but 
its day had long been done. Lord Derby never was a states- 
man ; he was not even a great leader of a party ; but he was a 
splendid figure-head for Conservatism in or out of power. He 
was, on the whole, a superb specimen of the English political 
nobleman. Proud of soul, but sweet in temper and genial in 
manner ; dignified as men are who feel instinctively that 
dignity pertains to them, and therefore never think of how to 
assert or to maintain it, he was eminently fitted by tempera- 
ment, by nature, and by fortune for the place it was given him 
to hold. His parliamentary oratory has already become a 
tradition. It served its purpose admirably for the time ; it 
showed, as Macaulay said, that Lord Derby possessed the very 
instinct of parliamentary debate. It was not weighted with 
the thought which could have secured it a permanent place in 
political literature, nor had it the imagination which would 
have lifted it into an atmosphere above the level of Hansard. 
In Lord Derby's own day the unanimous opinion of both 
Houses of Parliament would have given him a place among 
the very foremost of parliamentary orators. Many competent 
judges went so far as to set him distinctly above all living 
rivals. Time has not ratified this judgment. It is impossible 
that the influence of an orator could have faded so soon if he 
had really been entitled to the praise which many of his con- 
temporaries would freely have rendered to Lord Derby. The 
charm of his voice and style, his buoyant readiness, his rush- 
ing fluency, his rich profusion of words, his happy knack of 
illustration, allusion, and retort — all these helped to make 
men believe him a much greater orator than he really was. 
Something, too, was due to the influence of his position. It 
seemed a sort of condescension on the part of a great noble 
that he should consent to be an eloquent debater also, and 
to contend in parliamentary sword-play against professional 
champions like Peel and O'Connell and Brougham. It must 
count for something in Lord Derby's fame that, while far in- 
ferior to any of these men in political knowledge and in mental 
capacity, he could compare as an orator with each in turn, 
and — were it but for his own day, were it but while the magic 



en. xxiii. IRISH QUESTIONS. 355 

of his presence and his voice was yet a living influence —could 
be held by so many to have borne without disadvantage the 
test of comparison. 

When the Irish Church had been disposed of, Mr. Glad- 
stone at once directed his energies to the Irish land system. 
Ireland is essentially an agricultural country. It has few 
manufactures, not many large towns. Dublin, Belfast, Cork, 
Limerick, Waterford — these are the only towns that could be 
called large ; below these we come to places that in most other 
countries would be spoken of as villages or hamlets. The 
majority of the population of Ireland live on the land and by 
the land. The condition of most of the Irish tenantry may be 
painted effectively in a single touch when it is said that they were 
tenants-at-will. That fact would of itself be almost enough 
to account for the poverty and the misery of the agricultural 
classes in Ireland. But there were other conditions, too, which 
tended the same way. The land of Ireland was divided among 
a comparatively small number of landlords, and the landlords 
were, as a rule, strangers, the representatives of a title acquired 
by conquest. Many of them were habitual absentees, who 
would as soon have thought of living in Ashantee as in 
Munster or Connaught. The Irish agricultural population held 
the land which was their only means of living at the mercy of 
the landlord or his agent. They had no interest in being in- 
dustrious and improving their land. If they improved the 
patch of soil they worked on, their rent was almost certain to 
be raised, or they were turned out of the land without receiving 
a farthing of compensation for their improvements. Of course 
there were many excellent landlords, humane and kindly men 
• — men, too, who saw the wisdom of being humane and kind. 
But in the majority of cases the landlords and the agents 
held firmly by what seemed to them the right of property — the 
right to get as high a price for a piece of land as it would fetch 
in open competition. The demand for land was so great, the 
need of land was so vital, that men would offer any price for 
it. When the tenant had got hold of his piece of land, he had 
no idea of cultivating it to the best of his strength and oppor- 
tunities. Why should he ? The moment his holding began 
to show a better appearance, that moment he might look to 
having his rent raised, or to being turned out in favour of 
some competitor who offered higher terms for occupation. 
Why should he improve ? Whenever ho was turned out of 
the land he would have to leave his improvements for the 



356 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxm. 

benefit of the landlord or the new comer. He was, therefore, 
content to scratch the soil instead of really cultivating it. He 
extracted all he could from it in his short day. He lived from 
hand to mouth, from hour to hour. 

In one province of Ireland, indeed, a better condition of 
things existed. Over the greater part of Ulster the tenant- 
right system prevailed. This system was a custom merely, 
but it had gradually come to acquire something like the force 
of law. The principle of tenant-right was that a man should 
be allowed to remain in undisturbed possession of his holding 
as long as he paid his rent ; that he should be entitled, on 
giving up the land, to compensation for unexhausted improve- 
ments, and that he should be at liberty to sell the ' good-will ' 
of his farm for what it would fetch in the market. The tenant 
was free to do what a man who has a long lease of any holding 
may do ; he might sell to any bidder of whom his landlord 
approved the right to enter on the occupancy of the place. 
Wherever this tenant-right principle prevailed there was in- 
dustry, there was prosperity ; where it did not prevail was 
the domain of poverty, idleness, discontent, and crime. The 
one demand of the Irish agricultural population everywhere 
was for some form of fixity of tenure. The demand was 
neglected or refused by generations of English statesmen, 
chiefly because no statesman would take the trouble to distin- 
guish between words and things ; between shadowy, pedantic 
theories and clear, substantial facts. * Tenant-right,' said 
Lord Palmerston, amid the cheers of an assembly mainly 
composed of landlords, * is landlord's wrong.' Lord Palmer- 
ston forgot that the landlord, like everyone else in the com- 
monwealth, holds even his dearest rights of property subject 
to the condition that his assertion of them is not inconsistent 
with the general weal. The landlord holds his land as the 
shipowner holds his ship and the railway company its lines of 
rail ; subject to the right of the State to see that the duties of 
possession are properly fulfilled, and that the ownership is 
not allowed to become a public danger and a nuisance. Land 
is, from its very nature, from the fact that it cannot be in- 
creased in extent, and that the possession by one man is 
the exclusion of another, the form of property over which 
the State would most naturally be expected to reserve a right 
of ultimate control. Yet English statesmen for generations 
complacently asserted the impossibility of any legislative in- 
terference with the right of the landlord, as if legislation had 



ch. xxiii. IRISH QUESTIONS. 357 

not again and again interfered with the right of the factory- 
owner, the owner of mines, the possessor of railway shares, 
the shopkeeper ; the right of the master over his apprentice, 
the mistress in the hire of her maid-of-all-work. 

If ever there was a creature of law, and of authority acting 
in the place of law, it was the landlordism of Ireland. It was 
imposed upon the country and the people. It could not plead 
in support of any of its alleged rights even that prescriptive 
title which grows up with the growth of an institution that has 
held its place during all the ages to which tradition or memory 
goes back. The landlordism of Ireland was, compared with 
most European -institutions, a thing of the day before yester- 
day. It was the creation of conquest, the impost of confiscation. 
It could plead no title whatever to maintain an unlimited 
right of action in opposition to the welfare of the people on 
whom it was forced. At least it could claim no such title 
when once the time had passed away which insisted that the 
right of conquest superseded all other human rights, that the 
tenant, like the slave, had no rights which his master was 
bound to respect, and that the common weal meant simply 
the interests and the privileges of the ruling class. The 
moment the title of the Irish land system came to be fairly 
examined, it was seen to be full of flaws. It was dependent 
on conditions that had never been fulfilled. It had not even 
made the landlord class prosperous. It had not even suc- 
ceeded, as no doubt some of its founders intended that it 
should succeed, in colonising the island with English and 
Scotch settlers. For generations the land tenure system of 
Ireland had been the subject of parliamentary debate and 
parliamentary inquiry. Nothing came of all this. The sup- 
posed right of the landlord stopped the way. The one simple 
demand of the occasion was, as we have shown, security of 
tenure, and it was an article of faith with English statesman- 
ship until Mr. Gladstone's time that security for the tenant 
was confiscation for the landlord. 

Mr. Gladstone came into power full of genuine reforming 
energy and without the slightest faith in the economic wisdom 
of our ancestors. In a speech delivered by him during his 
electioneering campaign in Lancashire, he had declared that 
the Irish upas-tree had three great branches : the State 
Church, the Land Tenure System, and the System of Educa- 
tion, and that he meant to hew them all down if he could. 
On February 15, 1870, Mr. Gladstone introduced his Irish 



358 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxiii. 

Land Bill into the House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone's 
measure overthrew once for all the doctrine of the landlord's 
absolute and unlimited right. It recognised a certain pro- 
perty or partnership of the tenant in the land which he tilled. 
Mr. Gladstone took the Ulster tenant-right as he found it, 
and made it a legal institution. In places where the Ulster 
practice, or something analogous to it, did not exist, he threw 
upon the landlord the burden of proof as regarded the right of 
eviction. The tenant disturbed in the possession of his land 
could claim compensation for improvements, and the bill 
reversed the existing assumption of the law by presuming all 
improvements to be the property of the tenant, and leaving 
it to the landlord, if he could, to prove the contrary. The 
bill established a special judicial machinery for carrying out 
its provisions. It allowed the tribunals thus instituted to take 
into consideration not merely the strict legal conditions of 
each case, but also any circumstances that might affect the 
claim of the tenant as a matter of equity. Mr. Gladstone's 
great object was to bring about a state of things by virtue of 
which a tenant should not be dispossessed of his holding so 
long as he continued to pay his rent, and should in any case 
be entitled to full compensation for any substantial improve- 
ments which his energy or his capital might have effected. 
Mr. Gladstone, however, allowed landlords, under certain 
conditions, to contract themselves out of the provisions of the 
bill, and these conditions were so largely availed of in some 
parts of Ireland that there were more evictions after the bill 
had become law than before it had yet been thought of. On 
this ground the measure was actually opposed by some of the 
popular representatives of Ireland. The general opinion, how- 
ever, then and since was, that the bill was of inestimable value 
to Ireland in the mere fact that it completely upset the funda- 
mental principles on which legislation had always previously 
dealt with Irish land tenure. It put an end to the reign of 
the landlord's absolute power ; it reduced the landlord to the 
level of every other proprietor, of every other man in the 
country who had anything to sell or hire. It decided once for 
all against Lord Palmerston's famous dogma, and declared 
that tenant-right was not landlord's wrong. Therefore the 
new legislation might in one sense have well been called revo- 
lutionary. 

The bill passed without substantial alteration. On 
August 1, 1870, the bill received the Eoyal assent. The second 



CH. xxiii. IRISH QUESTIONS. 359 

branch of the upas-tree had been hewn down ; but the wood- 
man's axe had yet to be laid to a branch of a tougher fibre, 
well calculated to turn the edge of even the best weapon, and 
to jar the strongest arm that wielded it. Mr. Gladstone had 
dealt with Church and land ; he had yet to deal with univer- 
sity education. He had gone with Irish ideas thus far. 



CHAPTEE XXIV. 
•eeformation in a flood.' 

On June 10, 1870, men's minds were suddenly turned away 
from thought of political controversy to a country house near 
the Gad's Hill of Shakespeare, on the road to Bochester, where 
the most popular author of his day was lying dead. On the 
evening of June 8, Mr. Dickens became suddenly seized with 
paralysis. He fell into an unconscious state and continued so 
until his death, the evening after. The news was sent over 
the country on the 10th, and brought a pang as of personal 
sorrow into almost every home. Dickens was not of an age 
to die ; he had scarcely passed his prime. Born early in 
February 1812, he had not gone far into his fifty-ninth year. 
No author of our time came near him in popularity ; perhaps 
no English author ever was so popular during his own life. 
To an immense number of men and women in these countries, 
Dickens stood for literature ; to not a few his cheery teaching 
was sufficient as philosophy and even as religion. Soon after 
his death, as might have been expected, a certain reaction 
took place, and for a while it became the fashion to smile 
quietly at Dickens's teaching and his influence. That mood 
too will have its day and will pass. It may be safely predicted 
that Dickens will be found to have made a firm place in Eng- 
lish literature, although that place will probably not be so 
high as his admirers would once have claimed for him. 
Londoners were familiar with Dickens's personal appearance 
as well as with his writings, and certain London streets did 
not seem quite the same when his striking face and energetic 
movements could be seen there no more. It is likely that 
Dickens overworked his exuberant vital energy, his superb 
resources of physical health and animal spirits. In work and 
play, in writing and in exercising, he was unsparing of his 



360 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxiv. 

powers. Men who were early companions of his, and who 
had not half his vital power, outlived him many years. He 
was buried in Westminster Abbey, although his own desire 
was to be laid quietly in Eochester churchyard. It was held 
that the national cemetery claimed him. We cannot help 
thinking it a pity the claim was made. Most of the admirers 
of Dickens would have been better pleased to think that he 
lay beneath the green turf of the ancient churchyard, in 
venerable and storied Eochester, amid the scenes that he 
loved and taught so many others to love. 

Nothing in modern English history is like the rush of the 
extraordinary years of reforming energy on which the new 
Administration had now entered. Mr. Gladstone's Govern- 
ment had to grapple with five or six great questions of reform, 
any one of which might have seemed enough to engage the 
whole attention of an ordinary Administration. The new 
Prime Minister had pledged himself to abolish the State 
Church in Ireland and to reform the Irish Land Tenure sys- 
tem. He had made up his mind to put an end to the purchase 
of commissions in the army. Eecent events and experiences 
had convinced him that it was necessary to introduce the 
system of voting by ballot. He accepted for his Government 
the responsibility of originating a complete scheme of National 
Education. Meanwhile, there were many questions of the 
highest importance in foreign policy waiting for solution. It 
required no common energy and strength of character to keep 
closely to the work of domestic reform, amid such exciting 
discussions in foreign policy all the while, and with the war- 
trumpet ringing for a long time in the ears of England. 

Mr. Forster's Education Bill may be said to have been 
run side by side with the Irish Land Bill. The manner in 
which England had neglected the education of her poor 
children had long been a reproach to her civilisation. She 
was behind every other great country in the world ; she was 
behind many countries that in nowise professed to be great. 
For years the statesmanship of England had been kept from 
any serious attempt to grapple with the evil by the doctrine 
that popular education ought not to be the business of a 
Government. Private charity was eked out in a parsimonious 
and miserable manner by a scanty dole from the State ; and 
as a matter of course, where the direst poverty prevailed, and 
naturally brought the extremest need for assistance to educa- 
tion, there the wants of the place were least efficiently sup- 



en. xxiv. 'REFORMATION IN A FLOOD: 361 

plied. It therefore came about that more than two-thirds of 
the children of the country were absolutely without instruc- 
tion. One of the first great tasks which Mr. Gladstone's 
Government undertook was to reform this condition of things, 
and to provide England for the first time in her history with 
a system of National Education. On February 17, 1870, 
Mr. Forster introduced a bill, having for its object to provide 
for public elementary education in England and Wales. Mr. 
Forster proposed to establish a system of School Boards in 
England and Wales ; and to give to each board the power to 
frame bye-laws compelling the attendance of all children, 
from five to twelve years of age, within the school district. 
The Government did not see their way to a system of direct 
and universal compulsion. They therefore fell back on a 
compromise, by leaving the power to compel in the hands of 
the local authorities. Existing schools were, in many in- 
stances, to be adopted by the bill, and to receive Government 
aid, on condition that they possessed a certain amount of 
efficiency in education, that they submitted themselves to the 
examination of an undenominational inspector, and that they 
admitted a conscience clause as part of their regulations. 
The funds were to be procured, partly by local rates, partly 
by grants from the Treasury, and partly by the fees paid in 
the paying schools. There were of course to be free schools 
provided, where the poverty of the population was such as, in 
the opinion of the local authorities, to render gratuitous in- 
struction indispensable. 

The bill at first was favourably received. But the general 
harmony of opinion did not last long. Mr. Forster found, 
when he came to examine into the condition of the machinery 
of education in England, that there was already a system of 
schools existing under the charge of religious bodies of various 
kinds : the State Church, and the Koman Catholic Church, 
and other authorities. These he proposed to adopt as far as 
possible into his scheme ; to affiliate them, as it were, to the 
Governmental system of education. But he had to make 
some concession to the religious principles on which such 
schools were founded. He could not by any stroke of autho- 
rity undertake to change them all into secular schools. He 
therefore proposed to meet the difficulty by adopting regula- 
tions compelling every school of this kind which obtained 
Government aid or recognition to accept a conscience clause, 
by means of which the religious convictions of parents and 
16 



362 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxiv. 

children should be scrupulously regarded in the instruction 
given during the regular school hours. On this point the 
Nonconformists as a body broke away from the Government. 
They laid down the broad principle that no State aid whatever 
should be given to any schools but those which were con- 
ducted on strictly secular and undenominational principles. 
Their principle was that public money, the contribution of 
citizens of all shades of belief, ought only to be given for such 
teaching as the common opinion of the country was agreed 
upon. The contribution of the Jew, they argued, ought not 
to be exacted in order to teach Christianity ; the Protestant 
ratepayer ought not to be compelled to pay for the instruction 
of Eoman Catholic children in the tenets of their faith ; the 
Irish Catholic in London or Birmingham ought not to be 
called upon to pay in any way for the teaching of distinctively 
Protestant doctrine 

Mr. Forster could not admit the principle for which they 
contended. He could not say that it would be a fair and 
equal plan to offer secular education, and that alone, to all 
bodies of the community ; for he was well aware that there 
were such bodies who were conscientiously opposed to what 
was called secular education, and who could not agree to 
accept it. He therefore endeavoured to establish a system 
which should satisfy the consciences of all the denominations. 
But the Nonconformists would not meet him on this ground. 
They fought Mr. Forster long and ably and bitterly. The 
Liberal minister was compelled to accept more than once the 
aid of the Conservative party ; for that party as a whole 
adopted the principle which insisted on religious instruction 
in every system of national education. It more than once 
happened, therefore, that Mr. Forster and Mr. Gladstone 
found themselves appealing to the help of- Conservatives and 
of Eoman Catholics against that dissenting body of English- 
men who were usually the main support of the Liberal party. 
It happened too, very unfortunately, that at this time Mr. 
Bright 's health had so far given way as to compel him to seek 
complete rest from parliamentary duties. His presence and 
his influence with the Nonconformists might perhaps have 
tended to moderate their course of action, and to reconcile 
them to the policy of the Government even on the subject of 
national education ; but his voice was silent then, and for 
long after. The split between the Government and the Non- 
conformists became something like a complete severance. 



CH. xxiv. 'REFORMATION IN A FLOOD.* 363 

Many angry and bitter words were spoken in the House of 
Commons on both sides. On one occasion, there was an 
almost absolute declaration on the part of Mr. Gladstone and 
of Mr. Miall, a leading Nonconformist, that they had parted 
company for ever. The Education Bill was nevertheless a 
great success. The School Boards became really valuable 
and powerful institutions, and the principle of the cumulative 
vote was tested for the first time in their elections. When 
School Boards were first established in the great cities, their 
novelty and the evident importance of the work they had to 
do, attracted to them some of the men of most commanding 
intellect and position. The London School Board had as its 
chairman, for instance, Lord Lawrence, the great Indian 
statesman, lately a Viceroy, and for one of its leading members 
Professor Huxley. An important peculiarity of the School 
Boards too, was the fact, that they admitted women to the 
privileges of membership ; and this admission was largely 
availed of. Women voted, proposed amendments, sat on 
committees, and in every way took their part of the duties of 
citizenship in the business of national education. When the 
novelty of the system wore off, some of the more eminent men 
gradually fell out of the work, but the School Boards never 
failed to maintain a high and useful standard of membership. 
They began and continued to be strictly representative insti- 
tutions. Most of their work even still remains to be done. 
But so far as it has gone, there can be no doubt of the success 
it has achieved. It must, however, be owned that the Glad- 
stone administration was weakened and not strengthened by 
its education scheme. One of the first symptoms of coming 
danger to Mr. Gladstone's Government was found in the 
estrangement of the English Nonconformists. 

The Government were a little unfortunate too as regarded 
another great reform — that of the organisation of the army. 
Mr. Cardwell, the War Minister, brought forward a scheme 
for the reconstruction of the army, by combining under one 
system of discipline the regular troops, the militia, the volun- 
teers, and the reserve. One most important part of the 
scheme was the abolition of the purchase system for officers' 
commissions, and the substitution of promotion according to 
merit. Except in certain regiments, and in certain branches 
of the service outside England itself, the rule was, that an 
officer obtained his commission by purchase. Promotion was 
got hj. the same way. An officer bought a step up in the 



364 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxiv, 

service. A commission was a vested interest; a personal 
property. The owner had paid so much for it, and he ex- 
pected to get so much for it when he thought fit to sell it. 
The regulation price recognised by law and the Horse Guards 
was not by any means the actual price of the commission. It 
became worth much more to the holder, and of course he 
expected to get its real price, not its regulation, or nominal 
and imaginary price. This anomalous and extraordinary 
system had grown up with the growth of the English army, 
until it seemed in the eyes of many an essential condition of 
the army's existence. It found defenders almost everywhere. 
Because the natural courage, energy, and fighting power oi 
Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen had made a good army 
in spite of this unlucky practice, because the army did not 
actually collapse or wither away under its influence, many 
men were convinced that the army could not get on without 
it. The abolition of the purchase system had been advocated 
by generations of reformers without much success. But the 
question did not become really pressing and practical until 
Mr. Gladstone, on his accession to power, resolved to include 
it in his list of reforms. Of course Mr. Cardwell's proposition 
was bitterly and pertinaciously opposed. The principle of 
army purchase was part of a system in which large numbers 
of the most influential class had a vested interest. It was 
part of the aristocratic principle. To admit men to commis- 
sions in the army by pure merit and by mere competition 
would be to deprive the service of its specially aristocratic 
character. A large number of the Conservative party set 
themselves, therefore, not merely to oppose but to obstruct 
the bill. They proposed all manner of amendments, and 
raised all manner of discussions, in which the same arguments* 
were repeated over and over again by the same speakers in 
almost the same words. Men who had never before displayed 
the slightest interest in the saving of the public money, were 
now clamorous opponents of the bill on the ground that the 
abolition of purchase would render necessary the outlay of a 
large sum for compensation to officers thus deprived of their 
vested interests. This outlay the Liberal Government, usually 
censured by their opponents on the ground of their pinching 
parsimony, were quite willing to meet. Mr. Cardwell was 
prepared to make provision for it. Economy, however, 
became suddenly a weapon in the hands of some of the Con- 
servatives. The session was going on, and there seemed little 



CH. xxiv. REFORMATION IN A FLOOD* 365 

prospect of the Opposition being discouraged or slackening in 
their energy. The Government began to see that it would be 
impossible to carry through the vast and complicated scheme 
of army reorganisation which they had introduced, and Mr. 
Gladstone was resolved that the system of purchase must 
come to an end. It was thought expedient at last, and while 
the bill was still fighting its way through committee, to 
abandon a great part of the measure and persevere for the 
present only with those clauses which related to the abolition 
of the system of purchase. Under these conditions the bill 
passed its third reading in the Commons on July 3, 1871, 
not without a stout resistance at the last and not by a very 
overwhelming majority. This condition of things gave the 
majority in the House of Lords courage to oppose the scheme. 
A meeting of Conservative peers was held, and it was resolved 
that the Duke of Kichmond should offer an amendment to the 
motion for the second reading of the Army Purchase Bill. 
The Duke of Eichmond was exactly the sort of man that a 
party under such conditions would agree upon as the proper 
person to move an amendment. He was an entirely respect- 
able and safe politician ; a man of great influence so far as 
dignity and territorial position were concerned ; a seemingly 
moderate Tory who showed nothing openly of the mere par- 
tisan and yet was always ready to serve his party. "When the 
motion for the second reading came on, the Duke of Eich- 
mond moved a cleverly constructed amendment, declaring that 
the House of Lords was unwilling to agree to the motion 
until a comprehensive and complete scheme of army reorgani- 
sation should have been laid before it. But of course the 
object of the House of Lords was not to obtain further infor- 
mation ; it was simply to get rid of the bill for the present. 
The amendment of the Duke of Eichmond was adopted. 

Then Mr. Gladstone took a course which became the 
subject of keen and embittered controversy. Purchase in 
the army was permitted only by Eoyal warrant. The whole 
system was the creation of Eoyal regulation. The House of 
Commons had pronounced against the system. The House 
of Lords had not pronounced in favour of it. The House of 
Lords had not rejected the measure of the Government, but 
only expressed a wish for delay and for further information. 
Delay however would have been fatal to the measure for that 
session. Mr. Gladstone therefore devised a way for check- 
mating what he knew to be the design of the House of Lords. 



366 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxiv. 

It was an ingenious plan ; it was almost an audacious plan ; 
it took the listener's breath away to hear of it. Mr. Glad- 
stone announced that as the system of purchase was the 
creation of Eoyal regulation, he had advised the Queen to 
take the decisive step of cancelling the Eoyal warrant which 
made purchase legal. A new Koyal warrant was therefore 
immediately issued, declaring that, on and after November 1 
following, all regulations made by her Majesty or any of her 
predecessors regulating or fixing the prices at which commis- 
sions might be bought, or in any way authorising the purchase 
or sale of such commissions, should be cancelled. As far as 
regarded purchase, therefore, the controversy came suddenly 
to an end. The House of Lords had practically nothing to 
discuss. All that was left of the Government scheme on which 
the Peers could have anything to say was that part of the 
bill which provided compensation for those whom the abolition 
of the system of purchase would deprive of certain vested 
interests. For the Lords to reject the bill as it now stood 
would merely be to say that such officers should have no 
compensation. Astonishment fell upon the minds of most 
who heard Mr. Gladstone's determination. After a moment 
of bewilderment it was received with a wild outburst of 
Liberal exultation. It was felt to be a splendid party triumph. 
The House of Lords had been completely foiled. The tables 
had been turned on the Peers. Nothing was left for the House 
of Lords but to pass the bill as quickly as possible, coupling its 
passing, however, with a resolution announcing that it was 
passed only in order to secure to officers of the army the 
compensation they were entitled to receive, and censuring the 
Government for having attained, ' by the exercise of the 
prerogative and without the aid of Parliament,' the principal 
object which they contemplated in the bill. 

The House of Lords was then completely defeated. The 
system of purchase in the army was abolished by one sudden 
and clever stroke. The Government were victorious over 
their opponents. Yet the hearts of many sincere Liberals 
sank within them as they heard the announcement of the 
triumph. Mr. Disraeli condemned in the strongest terms 
the sudden exercise of the prerogative of the Crown to help 
the Ministry out of a difficulty ; and many a man of mark and 
influence on the Liberal benches felt that there was good 
ground for the strictures of the leader of the Opposition. Mr. 
Fawcett in particular condemned the act of the Government. 



CH. xxiv. * REFORMATION IN A FLOOD: 367 

He insisted that if it had been done by a Tory minister it 
would have been passionately denounced by Mr. Gladstone 
amid the plaudits of the whole Liberal party. Mr. Fawcett 
was a man who occupied a remarkable position in the House 
of Commons. In his early manhood he met with an accident 
which entirely destroyed the sight of his eyes. He made the 
noble resolve that he would nevertheless follow unflinchingly 
the career he had previously mapped out for himself, and 
would not allow the terrible calamity he had suffered to drive 
him from the active life of the political world. His tastes 
were for politics and political economy. He published a 
manual of political economy ; he wrote largely on the subject 
in reviews and magazines ; he was elected Professor of the 
science in his own university, Cambridge. He was in politics 
as well as in economics a pupil of Mr. Mill ; and with the 
encouragement and support of Mr. Mill he became a candidate 
for a seat in Parliament. He was a Liberal of the most 
decided tone ; but he was determined to hold himself inde- 
pendent of party. He stood for Southwark against Mr. Layard 
in 1857, and was defeated ; he contested Cambridge and 
Brighton at subsequent elections, and at last in 1865 he was 
successful at Brighton. He was not long in the House of 
Commons before it was acknowledged that his political career 
was likely to be something of a new force in Parliament. A 
remarkably powerful reasoner, he was capable notwithstand- 
ing his infirmity of making a long speech full of figures and 
of statistical calculations. His memory was fortunately so 
quick and powerful as to enable him easily to dispense with 
all the appliances which even well-trained speakers commonly 
have to depend upon when they enter into statistical contro- 
versy. In Parliament he held faithfully to the purpose with 
which he had entered it, and was a thorough Liberal in 
principles, but absolutely independent of the expedients and 
sometimes of the mere discipline of party. If he believed 
that the Liberal ministers were going wrong, he censured 
them as freely as though they were his political opponents. 
On this occasion he felt strongly about the course Mr. Glad- 
stone had taken, and he expressed himself in language of 
unmeasured condemnation. It seems hard to understand how 
any independent man could have come to any other conclusion. 
The exercise of the Koyal prerogative was undoubtedly legal. 
Much time was wasted in testifying to its legality. The 
question in dispute was whether its sudden introduction in 



368 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxiv. 

such a manner was a proper act on the part of the Govern- 
ment ; whether it was right to cut short by virtue of the 
Queen's prerogative a debate which had previously been carried 
on without the slightest intimation that the controversy was 
to be settled in any other way than that of the ordinary 
Parliamentary procedure. There seems to be only one rea- 
sonable answer to this question. The course taken by Mr. 
Gladstone was unusual, unexpected, unsustained by any pre- 
cedent ; it was a mere surprise ; it was not fair to the House 
of Lords ; it was not worthy of the occasion, or the ministry, 
or the Liberal principles they professed. This great reform 
could at most have been delayed for only a single session by 
the House of Lords. It is not even certain that the House of 
Lords, if firmly met, would have carried their opposition long 
enough to delay the measure by a single session. In any 
case the time lost would not have counted for much ; better 
by far to have waited another session than to have carried 
the point at once by a stroke of policy which seemed impatient, 
petulant, and even unfair. Among the many influences 
already combining to weaken Mr. Gladstone's authority, 
the impression produced by this stroke of policy was not the 
least powerful. 

The Ballot Bill was introduced by Mr. Forster on Feb- 
ruary 20, 1871. Its principal object was of course the intro- 
duction of the system of secret voting. On entering the 
polling-place, the voter was to mention to the official in 
charge his name and his place of residence. The official, 
having ascertained that he was properly on the register, 
would hand him a stamped paper on which to inscribe his 
vote. The voter was to take the paper into a separate com- 
partment and there privately mark a cross opposite the 
printed name of the candidate for whom he desired to re- 
cord his vote. He was then to fold up the paper in such a 
manner as to prevent the mark from 'being seen, and in the 
presence of the official, drop it into the urn for containing the 
votes. By this plan Mr. Forster proposed not only to obtain 
secrecy but also to prevent personation. The bill likewise 
undertook to abolish the old practice of nominating candidates 
publicly by speeches at the hustings. Instead of a public 
nomination it was intended that the candidates should be nomi- 
nated by means of a paper containing the names of a proposer 
and seconder and eight assentors, all of whom must be regis- 
tered voters. This paper being handed to the returning 



ch. xxiv. •REFORMATION IN A FLOOD? 369 

officer would constitute a nomination. Thus was abolished 
one of the most characteristic and time-dishonoured pecu- 
liarities of electioneering. Every humorous writer, every 
satirist with pencil or pen, from Hogarth to Dickens, had 
made merry with the scenes of the nomination day. In 
England the candidates were proposed and seconded in face 
of each other on a public platform in some open street or 
marketplace in the presence of a vast tumultuous crowd, 
three-fourths of whom were generally drunk, and all of whom 
were inflamed by the passion of a furious partisanship. 
Fortunate indeed was the orator whose speech was anything 
more than dumb show. Brass bands and drums not unusually 
accompanied the efforts of the speakers to make themselves 
heard. Brickbats, dead cats, and rotten eggs came flying 
like bewildering meteors across the eyes of the rival politicians 
on the hustings. The crowds generally enlivened the time by 
a series of faction fights among themselves. No ceremonial 
could be at once more useless and more mischievous. 

The Bill introduced by Mr. Forster would have deserved 
the support of all rational beings if it proposed no greater 
reform than simply the abolition of this abominable system. 
But the ballot had long become an indispensable necessity. 
The gross and growing corruption and violence which dis- 
graced every election began to make men feel that some- 
thing must be done to get rid of such hideous abuses. Mr. 
Bright had always been an earnest advocate of the ballot 
system ; and partly no doubt under his influence, and partly by 
the teaching of experience and observation, Mr. Gladstone 
became a convert to the same opinion. In 1869 a committee 
of the House of Commons was appointed, on the motion of 
Mr. Bruce, the Home Secretary, to inquire into the manner of 
conducting parliamentary and municipal elections. Its report 
was on the whole decidedly in favour of the principle of secret 
voting. Public opinion came round to the principle at once— 
the public out of doors that is ; for a great many members 
of both Houses of Parliament were still unconverted. Mr. 
Forster's Bill was stoutly resisted by the Conservatives. A 
good many Liberal members liked the ballot in their hearts 
little better than the Tories did. The long delays which inter- 
posed between the introduction of Mr. Forster's Bill and its 
passing through the House of Commons gave the House of 
Lords a plausible excuse for rejecting it altogether. The Bill 
was not read a third time in the Commons until August 8 ; it 
16* 



370 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxiv. 

was not sent up to the Lords until the 10th of that month — a 
date later than that usually fixed for the close of the session. 
Lord Shaftesbury moved that the Bill be rejected on the ground 
that there was no time left for a proper consideration of it, 
and his motion was carried by ninety-seven votes to forty-eight. 
Mr. Gladstone accepted the decision of the Lords as a mere 
passing delay, and with the beginning of the next session the 
ballot came up again. It was presented in the form of a Bill 
to amend the laws relating to procedure at parliamentary and 
municipal elections, and it included of course the introduction 
of the system of secret voting. The Bill passed quickly through 
the House of Commons. Those who most disliked it began 
now to see that they must make up their minds to meet their 
fate. At the instance of the House of Lords however the 
ballot was introduced as an experiment, and the Act was 
passed to continue in force for eight years ; that is, until the 
end of 1880. We may anticipate matters a little by saying 
that no measure of reform introduced through all that season 
of splendid reforming energy has given more universal satis- 
faction or worked with happier effect than the ballot.- 

The University Tests Bill was one of the greatest measures 
carried successfully into legislation during this season of un- 
paralleled activity. The effect of this Bill was to admit all 
lay students of whatever faith to the Universities of Oxford 
and Cambridge on equal terms. This settled practically a 
controversy and removed a grievance which had been attract- 
ing keen public interest for at least five -and- thirty years. The 
Government also passed a Trades Union Bill, moderating, as 
has already been shown, the legislation which bore harshly on 
the workmen. They established by Act of Parliament the 
Local Government Board, a new department of the admini- 
stration entrusted with the care of the public health, the con- 
trol of the Poor Law system, and all regulations applying to 
the business of districts throughout the country. The Govern- 
ment repealed the ridiculous and almost forgotten Ecclesias- 
tical Titles Bill. 

The popularity of Mr. Gladstone's Government was all 
the time somewhat impaired by the line of action, and even 
perhaps by the personal deportment, of some of its members. 
Mr. Lowe's budgets were not popular ; and Mr. Lowe had a 
taste for sarcasm which it was pleasant no doubt to indulge in 
at the expense of heavy men, but which was, like other plea- 
sant things, a little dangerous when enjoyed too freely. One 



CH. xxiv. ■ REFORMATION IN A FLOOD? 371 

of Mr. Lowe's budgets contained a proposition to make up for 
deficiency of income by a tax on matches. The match trade 
rose up in arms against the proposal. The trade was really a 
very large one, employing vast numbers of poor people, both 
in the manufacture and the sale, especially in the east end of 
London. All the little boys and girls of the metropolis whose 
poor bread depended on the trade arose in infantile insur- 
rection against Mr. Lowe. There were vast processions of 
match-makers and match-sellers to Palace Yard to protest 
against the tax. The contest was pitiful, painful, ludicrous ; 
no Ministry could endure it long. Mr. Lowe was only too 
glad to withdraw from his unenviable position. It was not 
pleasant to be regarded as a sort of ogre by thousands of poor 
little ragged boys and girls. Mr. Lowe withdrew his unlucky 
proposal, and set himself to work to repair by other ways and 
means the ravages which warlike times had made in his 
financial system. Another member of the Administration, 
Mr. Ayrton, a man of much ability but still more self-con- 
fidence, was constantly bringing himself and his Government 
into quarrels. He was blessed with a gift of offence. If a 
thing could be done either civilly or rudely, Mr. Ayrton was 
pretty sure to do it rudely. He was impatient with dull people, 
and did not always remember that those unhappy persons not 
only have their feelings, but sometimes have their votes. He 
quarrelled with officials ; he quarrelled with the newspapers ; 
he seemed to think a civil tongue gave evidence of a feeble 
intellect. He pushed his way along, trampling on people's 
prejudices with about as much consideration as a steam-roller 
shows for the gravel it crushes. Even when Mr. Ayrton was 
in the right he had a wrong way of showing it. 

The Emperor Napoleon had made war upon Prussia to 
recover his military popularity, which was much injured by 
the Mexican expedition and its ghastly failure. He forced the 
quarrel on the pretext that the Spanish people had invited a 
distant relation of the King of Prussia to become Sovereign of 
Spain. Louis Napoleon managed to put himself completely 
in the wrong. The King of Prussia at once induced his rela- 
tive to withdraw from the candidature in order not to disturb 
the susceptibilities of France ; and then the French Govern- 
ment pressed for a general pledge that the King of Prussia 
would never on any future occasion allow of any similar candi- 
dature. When it came to this, there was an end to negotiation. 
It was clear then that the Emperor was resolved to have a 



372 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxiv. 

quarrel. Count Bismarck must have smiled a grim smile. Hia 
enemy had delivered himself into Bismarck's hands. The 
Emperor had been for some time in failing health. He had 
not been paying much attention to the details of his adminis- 
tration. False security and self-conceit had operated among 
his generals and his War Department to the utter detriment 
of the army. Nothing was ready. The whole system was 
falling to pieces. Long after France had declared war, the 
army that was to go to Berlin was only dragging heavily 
towards the frontier. The experience of what had happened 
to Austria might have told anyone that the moment Prussia 
saw her opportunity she would move with the direct swiftness 
of an eagle's flight. But the French army stuck as if it was 
in mud. What everyone expected came to pass. The Prus- 
sians came down on the French like the rush of a torrent. 
The fortunes of the war were virtually decided in a day. Then 
the French lost battle after battle. The Emperor dared not 
return to Paris. The defence — for the Prussians soon became 
the invaders — was carried on with regard to the Emperor's 
political fortunes rather than to the military necessities of the 
hour. There were nothing but French defeats until there 
came at last the crowning disaster of Sedan. The Emperor 
surrendered his sword, and was a captive in the hands of 
his enemies. The Second Empire was gone in a moment. 
Paris proclaimed the Kepublic ; the Empress Eugenie fled to 
England ; the conqueror at Versailles was hailed as German 
Emperor. France lost two provinces, Alsace and Lorraine, 
and had to pay an enormous fine. 

The sympathies of the English people generally were at 
first almost altogether with Prussia. But when the Empire 
fell the feeling suddenly changed. It was the common idea that 
the Prussians ought to have been content with the complete 
destruction of the Bonapartist Empire and have made generous 
terms with the Bepublic. Great popular meetings were held in 
London, and in various provincial cities, to express sympathy 
with the hardly-entreated French. Many persons everywhere 
thought the Government ought to do something to assist the 
French Bepublic. Some were of opinion that the glory of 
England would suffer if she did not get into a fight with 
some Power or other. It came out in the course of the 
eager diplomatic discussions which were going on that there 
had been some secret talk at different times of a private 
engagement between France and Prussia which would have 



CH. xxiv. PREFORMATION IN A FLOOD* 373 

allowed France on certain conditions to annex Belgium. This 
astounding revelation excited alarm and anger in England. 
The Government met that possible danger by at once pressing 
upon France and Prussia a new treaty, by which these Powers 
bound themselves jointly with England to maintain the inde- 
pendence of Belgium and to take up arms against any State 
invading it. The Government might fairly claim to have thus 
provided satisfactorily against any menace to the integrity and 
independence of Belgium, and they prepared against the more 
general dangers of the hour by asking for a large vote to enable 
them to strengthen the military defences of the country. But 
they were seriously embarrassed by the manner in which 
Eussia suddenly proposed to deal with the Treaty of Paris. 
One article of that Treaty declared that 'the Black Sea is 
neutralised ; its waters and its ports, thrown open to the mer- 
cantile marine of every nation, are formally and in perpetuity 
interdicted to the flag of war, either of the Powers possessing 
its coasts or of any other Power,' and the Sultan of Turkey 
and the Emperor of Eussia engaged to establish or maintain 
no military or maritime arsenals on the shores of that sea. 
Eussia now took advantage of the war between France and 
Prussia to say that she would not submit to be bound by that 
article of the Treaty any longer. The Eussian statesmen 
pleaded as a justification of this blunt and sudden proceeding 
that the Treaty of Paris had been ignored by other Powers 
and in a variety of ways since the time of its signature, and 
that Eussia could not be expected to endure for ever an article 
which bore heavily, directly, and specially upon her. 

The manner of making the announcement was startling, 
ominous, and offensive. But there really was not much that 
any English statesman could do to interfere with Eussia 's 
declared intentions. It was not likely that France and Prussia 
would stop just then from the death-grapple in which they 
were engaged to join in coercing Eussia to keep to the disputed 
article in the Treaty. Austria of course would not under such 
circumstances undertake to interfere. It would have been a 
piece of preposterous quixotry on the part of England to act 
alone. To enforce the Treaty was out of the question ; but 
on the other hand it did not look seemly that the European 
powers should put up quite tamely with the dictatorial resolve 
of Eussia. The ingenious mind of Count Bismarck found a 
way of putting a fair show on the action of Europe. At his 
suggestion a conference of the representatives of the powers 



374 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxiv. 

which had signed the Treaty was held in London to talk the 
whole matter over. This graceful little fiction was welcomed 
by all diplomatists. The conference met on January 17, 1871, 
with every becoming appearance of a full belief in the minds 
of all its members that the Eussian Government had merely 
announced its wish to have the clause in the Treaty abrogated 
as a matter for the consideration of the European powers, and 
that the conference was to be assembled ' without any foregone 
conclusion as to its results.' Then the conference solemnly 
agreed upon a Treaty abrogating the clause for the neutra- 
lisation of the Black Sea. There was something a little 
farcical about the whole transaction. It did not tend to raise 
the credit or add to the popularity of the English Government. 
We do not know that there was anything better to do ; we 
can only say that the Government deserves commiseration 
which at an important European crisis can do nothing better. 
The American Government now announced that the timo 
had come when they must take some decided steps for the 
settlement of the Alabama claims. Attempts had already 
been made at a convention for the settlement of the claims. 
In one instance a convention, devised by Mr. Eeverdy Johnson, 
then American Minister in England, had actually been signed 
by Lord Clarendon, Foreign Secretary, whose death in June 
1870 was followed by Lord Granville's removal from the 
Colonial to the Foreign Office. The Senate of the United 
States however rejected this convention by a majority of 
fifty-four to one, and Mr. Eeverdy Johnson resigned his 
office. The doom of the convention was chiefly brought 
about by the efforts of Mr. Charles Sumner, a leading mem- 
ber of the Senate of the United States. Mr. Sumner was 
a man of remarkable force of character, a somewhat ' master- 
ful ' temperament, to use an expressive provincial word, a 
temperament corresponding with his great stature, his stately 
presence, and his singularly handsome and expressive face. 
Mr. Sumner had been for the greater part of his life an en- 
thusiastic admirer of England and English institutions. He 
had made himself acquainted with England and Englishmen, 
and was a great favourite in English society. He was a 
warm friend of Mr. Cobden, Mr. Bright, the Duke of Argyll, 
and many other eminent English public men. He was par- 
ticularly enthusiastic about England because of the manner 
in which she had emancipated her slaves and the emphatio 
ttsi'ms in which English society always expressed its horroi 



CH. xxiv. 'REFORMATION IN A FLOOD: 375 

of the system of slavery. When the American Civil War 
broke out he expected with full confidence to find the sym- 
pathies of England freely given to the side of the North. He 
was struck with amazement when he found that they were 
to so great an extent given to the South. But when he saw 
that the Alabama and other Southern cruisers had been built in 
England, manned in England, and allowed to leave our ports 
with apparently the applause of three-fourths of the repre- 
sentative men of England, his feelings towards this country 
underwent a sudden and a most complete change. He now 
persuaded himself that the sympathies of the English people 
were actually with slavery, and that England was resolved 
to lend her best help for the setting up of a slave -owning 
Eepublic to the destruction of the American Union. 

Mr. Sumner was mistaken in concluding that love of 
slavery and hatred of the Union dictated the foolish things 
that were often said and the unrightful things that were 
sometimes done by England. His mind, however, became 
filled with a fervour of anger against England. The zeal of 
his cause ate him up. All his love for England turned into 
hate. During all his career, Mr. Sumner had been a pro- 
fessed lover of peace ; had made peace his prevailing principle 
of action ; and yet he now spoke and acted as if he were 
determined that there must be war between England and the 
United States. Mr. Sumner denounced the convention made 
by Mr. Eeverdy Johnson with a force of argument and of 
passionate eloquence which would have borne down all oppo- 
sition if the Senate had not already been almost unanimously 
with him. It is right to say that the particular convention 
agreed on between Lord Clarendon and Mr. Eeverdy Johnson 
does not seem to have been one that the American Senate 
could reasonably be expected to accept, or that could possibly 
give satisfaction to the American people. The defect of this 
convention was that it made the whole question a mere 
matter of individual claims. It professed to have to deal 
with a number of personal and private claims of various 
kinds, pending since a former settlement in 1853 — claims 
made on the one side by British subjects against the American 
Government, and on the other by American citizens against 
the English Government ; and it proposed to throw in the 
Alabama claims with all the others, and have a convention 
for the general clearance of the whole account. The claim 
Bet up by the United States, on account of the cruise of 



376 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxiv, 

the Alabama, was first of all a national claim, and this way 
of dealing with it could not possibly satisfy the American 
people. 

The English Government wisely gave way. They con- 
sented to send out a commission to Washington to confer with 
an American Commission, and to treat the whole question in 
dispute as national and not merely individual. The Commis- 
sion was to enter upon all the various subjects of dispute 
unsettled between England and the United States ; the Ala- 
bama claims, the San Juan Boundary, and the Canadian 
Fishery Question. The Dominion of Canada was to be repre- 
sented on the Commission. The English Commissioners 
were Earl de Grey and Eipon (afterwards created Marquis of 
Eipon, in return for his services at Washington), Sir Stafford 
Northcote, Mr. Mountague Bernard, Professor of International 
Law at the University of Oxford ; and Sir Edward Thornton, 
English Minister at Washington. Sir John A. Macdonald 
represented Canada. The American Commissioners were 
Mr. Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State ; General Sehenck, 
afterwards American Minister in England ; Mr. J. C. Ban- 
croft Davis, Mr. Justice Nelson, Mr. Justice Williams, and 
Mr. E. E. Hoar. 

The Commissioners held a long series of meetings in Wash- 
ington, and at length arrived at a basis of arbitration. The 
Treaty of Washington acknowledged the international cha- 
racter of the dispute, and it opened with the remarkable 
announcement that ' Her Britannic Majesty has authorised 
her High Commissioners and Plenipotentiaries to express, in 
a friendly spirit, the regret felt by Her Majesty's Government 
for the escape, under whatever circumstances, of the Alabama 
and other vessels from British ports, and for the depredations 
committed by those vessels.' This very unusual acknow- 
ledgment ought not in itself to be considered as anything of a 
humiliation. But when compared with the stand which Eng- 
lish Ministers had taken not many years before, this was 
indeed a considerable change of attitude. It is not surprising 
that many Englishmen chafed at the appearance of submission 
which it presented. The Treaty then laid down three rules. 
These rules were : * A neutral Government is bound : first, to 
use due diligence to prevent the fitting-out, arming, or equip- 
ping, within its jurisdiction, of any vessel which it has reason- 
able ground to believe is intended to cruise or to carry on war 
against a Power with which it is at peace, and also to use like 



ch. xxiv. PREFORMATION IN A FLOOD* 377 

diligence $o prevent the departure from its jurisdiction of any 
vessel intended to cruise or carry on war as above, such vessel 
having been specially adapted in whole or in part, within such 
jurisdiction, to warlike use. Secondly, not to permit or suffer 
either belligerent to make use of its ports or waters as the base 
of naval operations against the other, or for the purpose of the 
renewal or augmentation of military supplies or arms, or the 
recruitment of men. Thirdly, to exercise due diligence in its 
own ports and waters, and as to all persons within its juris- 
diction, to prevent any violation of the foregoing obligations 
and duties.' 

The British Commissioners followed up the acceptance of 
these three rules by a saving clause, declaring that the Eng- 
lish Government could not assent to them as a ' statement of 
principles of international law which were in force at the time 
when the claims arose ; ' but that ' in order to evince its desire 
of strengthening the friendly relations between the two coun- 
tries, and of making satisfactory provision for the future,' it 
agreed that in deciding the questions arising out of the claims 
these principles should be accepted, ' and the high contracting 
parties agree to observe these rules between themselves in 
future, and to bring them to the knowledge of other maritime 
Powers, and to invite them to accede to them.' The Treaty 
then provided for the settlement of the Alabama claims by 
a tribunal of five arbitrators, one to be appointed by the 
Queen, and the others respectively by the President of the 
United States, the King of Italy, the President of the Swiss 
Confederation, and the Emperor of Brazil. This tribunal was 
to meet in Geneva, and was to decide by a majority all the 
questions submitted to it. The Treaty further provided for a 
tribunal to settle what may be called individual claims on 
either side, and another commission to meet afterwards at 
Halifax, Nova Scotia, and deal with the Fishery Question, an 
old outstanding dispute as to the reciprocal rights of British 
and American subjects to fish on each other's coasts. It 
referred the question of the northern boundary between the 
British North American territories and the United States to 
the arbitration of the German Emperor. It also opened the 
navigation of the St. Lawrence and other rivers. 

Some delay was caused in the meeting of the tribunal of 
arbitration at Geneva by the sudden presentation on the part 
of the American Government of what were called the indirect 
claims. To the surprise of everybody, the American case 



378 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxiv. 

when presented was found to include claims for vast and 
indeed almost limitless damages, for indirect losses alleged to 
be caused by the cruise of the Alabama and the other vessels. 
The loss by the transfer of trade to English vessels, the loss 
by increased rates of insurance, and all imaginable losses inci- 
dent to the prolongation of the war, were now made part of 
the American claims. It was clear that if such a principle 
were admitted there was no possible reason why the claims 
should not include every dollar spent in the whole operations 
of the war and in supplying any of the war's damages, from 
the first day when the Alabama put to sea. Even men like 
Mr. Bright, who had been devoted friends of the North during 
the war, protested against this insufferable claim. It was 
indeed a profound mistake. The arbitration was on the point 
of being broken off. The excitement in England was intense. 
The American Government had at last to withdraw the claims. 
The Geneva arbitrators of their own motion declared that all 
such claims were invalid and contrary to international law. 

The decision of the Geneva Tribunal went against Eng- 
land. The court were unanimous in finding England respon- 
sible for the acts of the Alabama. A majority found her 
responsible for the acts of the Florida and for some of those 
of the Shenandoah, but not responsible for those of other 
vessels. They awarded a sum of about three millions and a 
quarter sterling as compensation for all losses and final settle- 
ment of all claims including interest. The German Emperor 
decided in favour of the American claim to the small island 
of San Juan, near Vancouver's Island, a question remaining 
unsettled since the Oregon Treaty. San Juan had for years 
been in a somewhat hazardous condition of joint occupation 
by England and the United States. It was evacuated by 
England, in consequence of the award, at the close of Novem- 
ber 1873. 

The principle of arbitration had not thus far worked in a 
manner calculated greatly to delight the English people. In 
each case the award had gone decidedly against them. No 
doubt it had gone against them because the right of each case 
was against them ; and those who submit to arbitration have 
no business to complain because the decision is not given in 
their favour. However that may be, it is certain that the 
effect of the Geneva arbitration was to create a sore and angry 
feeling among Englishmen in general. The feeling found 
expression with some ; smouldered in sullenness with others. 



CH. xxiv. 'REFORMATION IN A FLOODS 379 

It was unreasonable and unjust ; but it was not altogether 
unnatural ; and it had its effect on the popularity of Mr. 
Gladstone's Government. 

The opening of the Session of 1872 was made melancholy 
by the announcement that Lord Mayo, the Viceroy of India, 
had been killed by a fanatical assassin in a convict settlement, 
on one of the Andaman Islands which the Viceroy was in- 
specting. Lord Mayo had borne himself well in his difficult 
position, and had won the admiration of men of all parties by 
his firmness, his energy, his humanity and his justice. 



CHAPTEE XXV. 

THE FALL OF THE GREAT ADMINISTRATION* 

The Liberal Ministry continued somehow to fall off in popu- 
larity. Mr. Gladstone was profoundly serious in his purposes 
of reform ; and very serious men are seldom popular in a 
society like that of London. The long series of bold and 
vigorous reforms was undoubtedly causing the public to lose 
its breath. The inevitable reaction was setting in. No popu- 
larity, no skill, no cunning in the management of men, no 
quality or endowment on the part of the Prime Minister, 
could have wholly prevented that result. Mr. Gladstone was 
not cunning in the management of men. He would probably 
have despised himself for availing of such a craft had he 
possessed it. He showed his feelings too plainly. If men 
displeased him he seldom took the trouble to conceal his 
displeasure. It was murmured among his followers that he 
was dictatorial ; and no doubt he was dictatorial in the sense 
that he had strong purposes himself, and was earnest in trying 
to press them upon other men. His very religious opinions 
served to interfere with his social popularity. He seemed to 
be a curious blending of the English High Churchman and 
the Scottish Presbyterian. He displeased the ordinary Eng- 
lish middle class by leaning too much to Eitualism ; and on 
the other hand, he often offended the Eoman Catholics by his 
impassioned diatribes against the Pope and the Church of 
Eome. One or two appointments made by or under the 
authority of Mr. Gladstone gave occasion to considerable 
controversy and to something like scandal. One of these was 



380 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxv. 

the appointment of the Attorney- General, Sir Bobert Collier, 
to a Puisne Judgeship of the Court of Common Pleas, in order 
technically to qualify him for a seat on the bench of a new 
Court of Appeal — that is to say, to become one of the paid 
members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. 
The statute required that every judge of the Court of Appeal 
should have been a judge of one of the ordinary courts ; and 
Sir Eobert Collier was passed through the Court of Common 
Pleas in order that he might have the technical qualification. 
There was not the slightest suggestion of any improper motive 
on the part of Mr. Gladstone, or lack of legal or judicial 
fitness on the part of Sir Eobert Collier. On the contrary, it 
was admitted that Sir Eobert Collier had helped the Govern- 
ment out of a difficulty by taking an appointment which 
several judges had declined, and which had not quite such a 
position as the traditions of his office would have entitled him 
to expect. It seemed, however, as if there was something of 
a trick in the act which thus passed him through the one 
court in order to give him a technical qualification for the 
other. A vote of censure on the Government was moved in 
the House of Lords, and the universal impression was that it 
would be carried. The vote of censure was, however, rejected 
by eighty-nine against eighty-seven. A similar attempt was 
made in the House of Commons, and was defeated; only 
however by a majority of twenty-seven, a small majority in 
the House where the strength of the Government was sup- 
posed to he. There can be no doubt that, although in neither 
House of Parliament could any expression of censure be 
obtained, the ' Colliery explosion,' as it was called, gave a 
downward push to the declining popularity of Mr. Gladstone's 
administration. 

The ' liquor interest ' too was soon in arms against him. 
The United Kingdom Alliance ' for the suppression of the 
liquor traffic ' had of late years been growing so strong as to 
become a positive influence in politics. Its object was to 
bring about the adoption of legislation which should leave it 
in the power of a two-thirds majority in each locality to stop 
altogether, if it were so thought fit, the public sale of intoxi- 
cating drinks. The Parliamentary leader of the agitation was 
Sir Wilfrid Lawson, a man of position, of great energy, and 
of thorough earnestness. Sir Wilfrid Lawson was not, how- 
ever, merely energetic and earnest. He had a peculiarly 
effective style of speaking, curiously unlike that which might 



CH. xxv. FALL OF THE GREAT ADMINISTRATION. 381 

be expected from the advocate of an austere and somewhat 
fanatical sort of legislation. He was a humorist of a fresh 
and vigorous order, and he always took care to amuse his 
listeners and never allowed his speeches to bore them. The 
Alliance was always urging on the Government and public 
opinion against the drink traffic, and it became clear that 
something must be done to regulate the trade. Mr. Bruce, 
the Home Secretary, brought in a Bill which the Alliance 
condemned as feebleness, and which the publicans resented as 
oppression. The Bill increased the penalties for drunkenness, 
and shortened the hours during which public-houses might be 
kept open on Sundays and on week days as well. The effect 
of the passing of this measure was to throw the publicans 
into open hostility to the Government. The publicans were 
a numerous body ; they were well organised ; the network of 
their trade and their Association spread all over the kingdom. 
The hostile feelings of some were perhaps not unnaturally 
embittered by the fact that many speakers and writers treated 
all publicans alike, made no distinction between the reputable 
and the disreputable, though it was well known that a large 
proportion of the publicans carried on a respectable trade, 
and were losers rather than gainers by drunkenness. The 
natural result of indiscriminate attack was to cause an indis- 
criminate alliance for the purposes of defence. 

The establishment of a republic in France could not be 
without its influence on English politics. A certain amount 
of more or less vague republican sentiment is always afloat on 
the surface of English radicalism. The estabHshment of the 
French Bepublic now came as a climax. At many of the great 
meetings which were held in London, and in most of the 
English cities, to express sympathy with the struggling re- 
public a good deal of very outspoken republicanism made itself 
heard. There could be no doubt that a considerable propor- 
tion of the working men in the cities were republicans in 
sentiment. English writers who were not by any means of 
sentimental school, but on the contrary were somewhat hard 
and cold in their dogmatism, began to publish articles in 
4 advanced ' reviews and magazines, distinctly pointing out the 
logical superiority of the republican theory. Men were already 
discussing the possibility of a declared republican party being 
formed both in and out of Parliament ; not indeed a party 
clamouring for the instant pulling down of the monarchy ; no 
one thought of that; but a party which would avow itself 



382 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxv. 

republican in principle, and acknowledge that its object was to 
bring about a change in public sentiment which might pre- 
pare the way for a republic in the time to come. But France, 
which had given the impulse, gave also the shock that brought 
reaction. The wild theories, the monstrous excesses, the 
preposterous theatricism, of the Paris Commune had a very 
chilling effect on the ardour of English republicans. The 
movement in England had, however, one or two curious 
episodes before it sank into quiescence. 

In March 1872, Sir Charles Dilke brought on a motion, in 
the House of Commons, for inquiring into the manner in 
which the income and allowances of the Crown are expended. 
Sir Charles Dilke had been for some months of the preceding 
autumn the best abused man in Great Britain. His name ap- 
peared over and over again in the daily papers. The comic papers 
caricatured ' Citizen Dilke ' every week. The telegraph-wires 
carried his doings and speeches everywhere. American corre- 
spondents ' interviewed ' him, and pictured him as the future 
President of England. He went round the towns of the North 
of England, delivering a lecture on the expenses of royalty ; 
and his progress was marked by more or less serious riots 
everywhere. Life was sacrificed in more than one of these 
tumults. The working men of London and of the North held 
great meetings to express their approval of his principles and 
conduct. To increase and perplex the excitement, the Prince 
of Wales fell ill, and if Sir Charles Dilke had personally caused 
his illness he could not have been more bitterly denounced by 
Borne speakers and writers. He was represented as a monster 
of disloyalty, v4io had chosen to assail the Queen (against 
whom it is only fair to say he had never uttered a disparaging 
word) while her eldest son lay struggling with death. The 
Prince of Wales, given over by all the doctors, recovered ; and 
in the outburst of public gladness and loyalty that followed 
his restoration to health, Sir Charles Dilke was almost for- 
gotten. But he had been challenged to repeat in the House 
of Commons the statements that he had made in the country. 
He answered the challenge by bringing forward the motion to 
inquire into the manner in which the income and allowances 
of the Crown were spent. There was unmistakeable courage 
in the cool, steady way in which he rose to propose his motion. 
Sir Charles Dilke knew that everyone in that House, save 
three or four alone, was bitterly opposed to him. It is a hard 
trial to the nerves to face such an audience. But neither then 



CH. xxv. FALL OF THE GREAT ADMINISTRATION, 383 

nor after did lie show the slightest sign of quailing. His 
speech was well got up as to facts, well arranged, and evidently 
well committed to memory, but it was not eloquent. The 
warmth of Mr. Gladstone's reply was almost startling by sheer 
force of contrast to Sir Charles Dilke's quiet, dry, and laboured 
style. No one expected that Mr. Gladstone would be so pas- 
sionately merciless as he proved to be. His vehemence, forc- 
ing the House into hot temper again, was one cause at least of 
the extraordinary tumult that arose when Sir Charles Dilke's 
friend and ally, Mr. Auberon Herbert, rose to speak, and de- 
clared himself also a republican. This was the signal for as 
extraordinary a scene as the House of Commons has ever exhi- 
bited. The tumult became so great, that if it had taken place 
at any public meeting, it would have been called a riot, and 
would have required the interference of the police. Some 
hundreds of strong, excited, furious men were shouting and 
yelling with the object of interrupting the speech and drown- 
ing the voice of one man. The Speaker of the House of 
Commons is usually an omnipotent authority. But on this 
occasion the Speaker was literally powerless. There was no 
authority which could overawe that House. Men of edu- 
cation and position — university men, younger sons of peers, 
great landowners, officers in crack cavalry regiments, the very 
elite, many of them, of the English aristocracy, became for 
the moment a merely furious mob. They roared, hissed, 
gesticulated ; the shrill * cock-crow,' unheard in the House of 
Commons for a whole generation, shrieked once more in the 
ears of the bewildered officials. 

It was clear that there was no republican party, properly so 
called, in the country. Some of the * philosophical Eadicals,' 
who were most strongly republican in sentiment and convic- 
tion, declared in the most explicit words that they would not 
make the slightest effort to agitate in favour of a republic ; that 
they did not think the difference between a republic and the 
British Constitution was worth the trouble of a long agitation. 
If a republic were to come, they said, it would come in good 
time. England could afford to wait. When this philosophical 
mood of mind prevailed among republicans it was clear that 
the question of a republic had not, as the phrase is, ' come up.' 
A new figure did, however, arise about that time in Eng- 
lish politics. It was that of the English agricultural labourer 
as a political agitator and member of a trades-union. For 
years and years the working man in cities had played an 



384 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxv. 

influential part in every agitation. All the while the rural 
labourer was supposed to be entirely out of the play. No 
one troubled about him. Sometimes a London newspaper 
sent down a special correspondent to explore the condition 
of some village, and he wrote back descriptions S^hich made 
the flesh creep about the miseries of some labourer's family 
of eight or nine who habitually slept in one room, and in 
not a few instances in one bed. That was the rural labourer 
at his worst. At his best he seemed a picture of hard- 
working, cleanly, patient, and almost hopeless poverty. Mr. 
Disraeli and the Tory landlords said he was too contented 
and happy to need a change ; most other people thought 
that he was rendered too stolid by the monotonous misery 
of his condition. Suddenly in the spring of 1872, not long 
after the opening of Parliament, vague rumours began to reach 
London of a movement of some kind among the labourers of 
South Warwickshire. It was first reported that they had asked 
for an increase of wages, then that they were actually forming 
a labourers' union, after the pattern of the artisans; then 
that they were on strike. There came accounts of meetings of 
rural labourers — meetings positively where men made speeches. 
Instantly the London papers sent down their special corre- 
spondents, and for weeks the movement among the agricultural 
labourers of South Warwickshire — the country of Shakespeare 
— became the sensation of London. How the thing first came 
about is not very clear. But it seems that in one of the South 
Warwickshire villages, when there was sad and sullen talk of 
starvation, it occurred to someone to suggest a ' strike ' against 
the landlords. The thing took fire somehow. A few men 
accepted it at once. In the neighbouring village was a man 
who, although only a day labourer, had been long accustomed 
to act as a volunteer preacher of Methodism, and who by his 
superior intelligence, his good character, and his effective way 
of talking, had acquired a great influence among his fellows. 
This man was Joseph Arch. He was consulted and he ap- 
proved of the notion. He was asked if he would get together 
a meeting and make a speech, and he consented. Calling a 
meeting of day labourers then was almost as bold a step as 
proclaiming a revolution. Yet it was done somehow. There 
were no circulars, no placards, none of the machinery which 
we all associate with the getting up of a meeting. The news 
had to be passed on by word of mouth that a meeting was to 
be held and where ; the incredulous had to be convinced that 



ch. xxv. FALL OF THE GREAT ADMINISTRATION. 385 

there was really to be a meeting, the timid had to be prevailed 
on to take courage and go. The meeting was held under a 
great chestnut tree, which thereby acquired a sort of fame. 
There a thousand labourers came together and were addressed 
by Joseph Arch. He carried them all with him. His one 
great idea — great and bold to them, simple and small to us — 
was to form a labourers' union like the trades-unions of the 
cities. The idea was taken up with enthusiasm. New branches 
were formed every day. Arch kept on holding meetings and 
addressing crowds. The whole movement passed, naturally 
and necessarily, into his hands. How completely it was a 
rural labourers' movement, how little help or guidance it re- 
ceived in its origin from other sources, how profoundly isolated 
from the outer and active world was its scene, may be under- 
stood from the fact that it was nearly six weeks in action 
before its very existence was known in London. Then the 
special correspondents went down to the spot, and turned a 
blaze of light on it. Mr. Auberon Herbert and other active 
reformers appeared on the scene and threw themselves into 
the movement. Meetings were held in various villages, and 
Mr. Arch found himself in the constant companionship of 
members of Parliament, leaders of political organisations, 
and other unwonted associates. The good sense of the 
sturdy labourer never forsook the leader of the movement, 
nor did he ever show any inclination to subordinate his en- 
terprise to any political agitation. The labourers took the 
help of political leaders so far as the mere conduct of the 
organisation was concerned, but they did not show any inclina- 
tion to allow their project to expand as yet beyond its simple 
and natural limits. On the other hand, it was clear that, so 
far as the labourers had any political sympathies, they were 
with Liberalism and against Toryism. This too was a little 
surprise for the public. Most persons had supposed that a 
race of beings brought up for generations under the exclusive 
tutorship of the landlord, the vicar, and the wives of the land- 
lords and the vicars, would have had any political tendencies 
they possessed drilled and drummed into the grooves of Toryism. 
The shock of surprise with which the opposite idea impressed 
itself upon the minds of the Conservative squires found ready 
and angry expression. The landlords in most places declared 
themselves against the movement of the labourers. Some of 
them denounced it in unmeasured language. Mr. Disraeli at 
once sprang to the front as the champion of feudal aristocracy 

17 



386 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxy. 

and the British country squire. The controversy was taken up 
in the House of Commons, and served, if it did nothing else, 
to draw all the more attention' to the condition of the British 
labourer. 

One indirect but necessary result of the agitation was to 
remind the public of the injustice done to the rural population 
when they were left unenfranchised at the time of the passing 
of the last Beform Bill. The injustice was strongly pressed 
upon the Government, and Mr. Gladstone frankly acknow- 
ledged that it would be impossible to allow things to remain 
long in their anomalous state. In truth when the Beform 
Bill was passed nobody supposed that the rural population 
were capable of making any use of a vote. Therefore the 
movement which began in Warwickshire took two directions 
when the immediate effects of the partial strike were over. 
A permanent union of labourers was formed corresponding 
generally in system with the organisations of the cities. The 
other direction was distinctly political. The rural population 
through their leaders joined with the reformers of the cities 
for the purpose of obtaining an equal franchise in town and 
country; in other words, for the enfranchisement of the 
peasantry. The emancipation of the rural labourers began 
when the first meeting answered the appeals of Joseph Arch. 
The rough and ready peasant preacher had probably little 
idea, when he made his speech under the chestnut tree, that 
he was speaking the first words of a new chapter of the 
country's history. 

A few lines ought perhaps to be spared to one of the most 
remarkable instances of disputed identity on record. A claim 
was suddenly made upon the Tichborne baronetcy and estates 
by a man who came from Australia and who announced him- 
Belf as the heir to the title and the property. He declared that 
he was the Sir Boger Tichborne who was supposed to have 
gone down with the wreck of the Bella, sailing from Bio in 
South America years before. ' The Claimant ' was curiously 
unlike what people remembered Boger Tichborne, not only in 
face but in figure and in manners. A slender, delicate, some- 
what feeble young man, of fair although not finished education, 
who had always lived in good society and showed it in his lan- 
guage and bearing, went down in the Bella, or at least disap- 
peared with her; and thirteen years afterwards there came 
from Australia a man of enormous bulk, ignorant to an almost 
inconceivable degree of ignorance, and who if he were Boger 



CH. xxv. FALL OF THE GREAT ADMINISTRATION. 387 

Ticliborne had not only forgotten all the manners of his class 
but had forgotten the very names of many of those with whom 
he ought to have been most familiar, including the name of 
his own mother ; and this man presented himself as the lost 
heir and claimed the property. Yet it is certain that his story 
was believed by the mother of Eoger Tichborne, and by a 
considerable number of persons of undoubted veracity and 
intelligence who had known Eoger Tichborne in his youth. 
He utterly failed to make out his claim in a Court of Law. It 
was shown upon the clearest evidence that he had gradually 
put together and built up around him a whole system of im- 
posture. He was then put on trial for his frauds, found guilty, 
and sentenced to fourteen years' penal servitude. Yet thou- 
sands of ignorant persons, and some persons not at all ignorant, 
continued, and to this day continue, to believe in him. 

On January 9, 1873, Louis Napoleon, late Emperor of the 
French, died at his house in Chislehurst, Kent. After the 
overthrow of the Empire, the fallen Emperor came to Eng- 
land. He settled with his wife and son at Chislehurst, and 
lived in dignified semi-retirement. The Emperor became a 
sort of favourite with the public here. A reaction seemed to 
have set in against the dread and dislike with which he had 
at one time been regarded. He enjoyed a certain amount oi 
popularity. Louis Napoleon had for a long time been in 
sinking health. His life had been overwrought in every way. 
He had lived many lives in a comparatively short space of 
time. Most of his friends had long been expecting his death 
from week to week, almost from day to day. The event 
created no great sensation. Perhaps even the news of his 
death was but an anti-climax after the news of his fall. For 
twenty years he had filled a space in the eyes of the world 
with which the importance of no man else could pretend to 
compare. His political bulk had towered up in European 
affairs like some huge castle dominating over a city. All the 
earth listened to the lightest word he spoke. For good or 
evil his influence and his name were potent in every corner of 
the globe. His nod convulsed continents. His arms glittered 
from the Crimea to Cochin-China, from Algeria to Mexico. 
The whole condition of things seemed changed when Louis 
Napoleon fell at Sedan. Some forty years of wandering, of 
obscurity, of futile, almost ludicrous enterprises, of exile, of 
imprisonment, of the world's contempt, and then twenty years 
of splendid success, of supreme sovereignty, had led him to 



3S8 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxv. 

this — to the disgrace of Sedan, to the quiet fading days of 
Chislehurst. 

Death was very busy about this time with men whose 
names had made deep mark on history or letters. Lord 
Lytton, the brilliant novelist, the successful dramatist, the 
composer of marvellous Parliamentary speeches, died on 
January 18, 1873. Dr. Livingstone, the famous missionary 
and explorer, had hardly been discovered among the living by 
the enterprise and energy of Mr. Stanley, when the world 
learned that he was dead. So many false reports of his 
death had been sent about at different times that the state- 
ment now was received with incredulity. The truth had to 
be confirmed on testimony beyond dispute before England 
would accept the fact that the long career of devotion to the 
one pursuit was over, and that Africa had had another victim. 
John Stuart Mill died on May 8, 1873, at his home at 
Avignon, where the tomb of his wife was made. ' There's a 
great spirit gone,' was the word of all men. A loftier and 
purer soul, more truly devoted to the quest of the truth, had 
not mingled in the worldly affairs of our time. His influence 
over the thought and the culture of his day was immense. 
Most of Mr. Mill's writings may safely be regarded as the 
possession of all the future, and he has left an example of 
candour in investigation and fearless moral purpose in action 
such as might well leaven even the most thoughtless and 
cynical generation. A sudden accident, the stumble of a 
horse, brought to a close, on July 19, the career of the Bishop 
of Winchester, the many-sided, energetic, eloquent Samuel 
Wilberforce. He had tried to succeed in everything, and he 
went near success. He tried to know everybody, and under- 
stand everybody's way of looking at every question. He was a 
great preacher and Parliamentary orator, a great bishop, a wit, 
a scholar, an accomplished man of the world ; but he was a 
good man and good minister always. On the very day after 
the death of the Bishop of Winchester died Lord Westbury, 
who had been Lord Chancellor, a man of great ability, un- 
surpassed as a lawyer in his time, endowed with as bitter a 
tongue and as vitriolic a wit as ever cursed then possessor. 
The deaths of Sir Edwin Landseer, the painter, Sir Henry 
Holland, the famous physician and traveller, whose patients 
and personal friends were Emperors, Kings, Presidents, and 
Prime Ministers, and of Professor Sedgwick, the geologist, 
ought to be mentioned. Nor must we omit from our death- 



CH. xxv. FALL OF THE GREAT ADMINLSTRATION. 389 

roll the name of Dr. Lusliington, who, in addition to his own 
personal distinction, is likely to be remembered as the deposi- 
tary of a secret confided to him in an earlier generation by 
Lady Byron, the secret of the charge she had to make against 
her husband. The whole story was revived before Dr. Lush- 
ishgton's death by a painful controversy, but he refused even 
by a yes or no to reveal Lady Byron's confidence. 

The year which saw so many deaths was a trying time for 
the Liberal Government. The novelty of the reforming 
administration was well-nigh worn off, and there was yet 
some work which Mr. Gladstone was pledged to do. Here 
and there, when it happened that the death or retirement of 
a member of Parliament gave an opportunity for a new elec- 
tion, it seemed of late to happen that the election went 
generally agamst the Government. The Conservatives were 
plucking up a spirit everywhere, and were looking closely 
after their organisation. Mr. Disraeli himself had taken to 
going round the country, addressing great assemblages and 
denouncing and ridiculing the Liberal Government. In one 
of his speeches, Mr. Disraeli had spoken of a new difficulty in 
Irish politics and a new form of agitation that had arisen in 
Ireland. The Home Eule organisation had sprung suddenly 
into existence. 

The Home Kule agitation came, in its first organised form, 
mainly from the inspiration of Irish Protestants. The dis- 
establishment of the Church had filled most of the Protestants 
of Ireland with hatred of Mr. Gladstone, and distrust of the 
Imperial Parliament and English parties. It was therefore 
thought by some of them that the time had come when 
Irishmen of all sects and parties had better trust to them- 
selves and to their united efforts than to any English Minister, 
Parliament, or party. Partly in a petulant mood, partly in 
despondency, partly out of genuine patriotic impulse, some of 
the Irish Protestants set going the movement for Home Eule. 
But although the actual movement came into being in that 
way, the desire for a native Parliament had always lived 
among large classes of the Irish people. Attempts were 
always being made to construct something like a regular 
organisation with such an object. The process of pacification 
was going on but slowly. It could only be slow in any case ; 
the effects of centuries of bad legislation could not by any 
human -possibility be effaced by two or three years of better 
government. But there were many Irishmen who, them- 



3QO A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxv. 

selves patient and moderate, saw with distinctness that the 
feeling of disaffection, or at least of discontent, among the 
Irish people was not to be charmed away even by such 
measures as the Disestablishment of the Irish Church. They 
saw what English statesmen would not or could not see, that 
the one strong feeling in the breast of a large proportion of 
the population of Ireland was dislike to the rule of an English 
Parliament. The national sentiment, rightly or wrongly, for 
good or ill, had grown so powerful that it could not be over- 
come by mere concessions in this or that detail of legislation. 
These Irishmen of moderate views felt convinced that there 
were only two alternatives before England ; either she must 
give back to Ireland some form of national Parliament, or 
she must go on putting down rebellion after rebellion, and 
dealing with Ireland as Bussia had dealt with Poland. They 
therefore welcomed the Home Kule movement, and conscien- 
tiously believed that it would open the way to a genuine 
reconciliation between England and Ireland on conditions of 
fair co-partnership. 

Several Irish elections took place about the time when the 
Home Eule movement had been fairly started. They were 
fought out on the question for or against Home Eule ; and 
the Home Eulers were successful. The leadership of the new 
party came into the hands of Mr. Butt, who returned to Par- 
liament after a considerable time of exile from political life. 
Mr. Butt was a man of great ability, legal knowledge, and 
historical culture. He had begun life as a Conservative and 
an opponent of O'Connell. He had become one of the orators 
of the short-lived attempt at a Protectionist reaction in Eng- 
land. He was a lawyer of great skill and success in his 
profession; as an advocate he had for years not a rival at 
the Irish bar. He had taken part in the defence of Smith 
O'Brien and Meagher at Clonmel, in 1848 ; and when the 
Fenian movements broke out, he undertook the defence of 
many Fenian prisoners. He became gradually drawn away 
from Conservatism and brought round to Nationalism. Mr. 
Butt dropped entirely out of public life for a while; and 
when he reappeared it was as the leader of the new Home 
Eule movement. There was not then in Irish politics any 
man who could pretend to be his rival. He was a speaker at 
once powerful and plausible ; he had a thorough knowledge 
of the constitutional history and the technical procedures of 
Parliament, and he could talk to an Irish monster meeting 



CH. xxv. FALL OF THE GREAT ADMINISTRATION. 391 

with vivacity and energy. Almost in a moment a regular 
Home Eule party was set up in the House of Commons. 
Popular Irish members who had been elected previous to the 
organisation of the movement gave in their adhesion to it ; 
and there was in fact a sudden revival of the constitutional 
movement for the satisfaction of Irish national claims which 
had fallen asleep after the death of O'Connell and the failure 
of the Young Ireland rebellion of 1848. 

The Home Kule movement unquestionably put Mr. Glad- 
stone in a new difficulty. It was now certain that when 
Parliament met, an organised Home Eule party would be 
found there ; and a good many strong Conservatives and weak 
Liberals were inclined to hold Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy 
responsible for the uprise of this new agitation. The prospects 
were on the whole growing somewhat ominous for the Liberal 
Government. Not only the Conservative party were plucking 
up a spirit, but the House of Lords had more than once made 
it clear that they felt themselves emboldened to deal as they 
thought fit with measures sent up to them from the House of 
Commons. When the peers begin to be firm and to assert 
their dignity, it may always be taken for granted that there is 
not much popular force at the back of the Government. 

Parliament met on February 6, 1873. It is a remarkable 
illustration of the legislative energy with which the Govern- 
ment were even yet filled, that on the very same night 
(February 13), at the very same hour, two great schemes of 
reform, reform that to slow and timid minds must have 
seemed something like revolution, were introduced into Par- 
liament. One was the Irish University Education Bill, which 
Mr. Gladstone was explaining in the House of Commons ; the 
other was a measure to abolish the appellate jurisdiction of 
the House of Lords, and establish a judicial Court of Appeal 
in its stead. This latter measure was introduced by Lord 
Selborne, lately Sir Eoundell Palmer, who had been raised to 
the office of Lord Chancellor, on the resignation of Lord 
Hatherley, whose eyesight was temporarily affected. Great 
as the change was which Lord Selborne proposed to intro- 
duce, public attention paid comparatively little heed to it at 
that moment. Everyone watched with eager interest the 
development of Mr. Gladstone's most critical scheme for the 
improvement of university education in Ireland. Irish univer- 
sity education was indeed in a very anomalous condition. 
Ireland had two universities : that of Dublin, which was then 



392 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxv. 

a distinctly Protestant institution ; and the Queen's Univer- 
sity, which was established on a strictly secular system, and 
which the heads of the Catholic Church had on that account 
condemned. The Catholics asked for a chartered Catholic 
university. The answer made by most Englishmen was, that 
to grant a charter to a Catholic university would be to run 
the risk of lowering the national standard of education, and 
that to grant any State aid to a Catholic university would be 
to endow a sectarian institution out of the public funds. The 
Catholic made rejoinder that a mere speculative dread of 
lowering the common standard of university education was 
hardly a reason why five-sixths of the population of Ireland 
should have no university education of that kind at all ; that 
the University of Dublin was in essence a State-endowed 
institution ; and that the Queen's University was founded by 
State money, on a principle which excluded the vast majority 
of Catholics from its advantages. 

Mr. Gladstone's measure was a gallant and a well-meant 
effort to reconcile the conflicting claims. Mr. Gladstone 
proposed to establish in Ireland one central university, the 
University of Dublin, to which existing colleges and colleges 
to exist hereafter might affiliate themselves, and in the 
governing of which they would have a share, while each 
college would make what laws it pleased for its own constitu- 
tion, and might be denominational or undenominational as it 
thought fit. The Legislature would give an open career and 
fair play to all alike ; and in order to make the University 
equally applicable to every sect, it would not teach disputed 
branches of knowledge, or allow its examinations for prizes to 
include any of the disputed questions. The colleges could act 
for themselves with regard to the teaching of theology, moral 
philosophy, and modern history ; the central University would 
maintain a neutral ground so far as these subjects were con- 
cerned, and would have nothing to do with them. This 
scheme looked plausible and even satisfactory for a moment. 
It was met that first night with something like a chorus of 
approval from those who spoke. But there was an ominous 
silence in many parts of the House ; and after a while the 
ominous silence began to be very alarmingly broken. The 
more the scheme was examined the less it seemed to find 
favour on either side of the House. It proposed to break up 
and fuse together three or four existing systems, and ap- 
parently without the least prospect of satisfying any of the 



ch. xxv. FALL OF THE GREAT ADMINISTRATION. 393 

various sects and parties to compose whose strife this great 
revolution was to be attempted. There was great justice in 
the complaint that soon began td be heard from both sides of 
the House of Commons : ' You are spoiling several institutions, 
and you are not satisfying the requirements of anybody what- 
ever.' 

The agitation against the bill grew and grew. The late 
Professor Cairnes, then in fast failing health, inspired and 
guided much of that part of the opposition which condemned 
the measure because of the depreciating effect it would have 
on the character of the higher education of Ireland. The 
English Nonconformists were all against it. The Conserva- 
tives were against it, and it soon became evident that the 
Irish members of Parliament would vote as a body against it. 
The crisis came on an amendment to the motion for the second 
reading. The amendment was moved on March 3 by Mr. 
Bourke, brother of the late Lord Mayo. The debate, which 
lasted four nights, was brilliant and impassioned. Mr. Disraeli 
was exulting, and his exultation lent even more than usual 
spirit to his glittering eloquence as he taunted Mr. Gladstone 
with having mistaken ' the clamour of the Nonconformist for 
the voice of the nation,' and declared his belief that the English 
people were weary of the policy of confiscation. 

When Mr. Gladstone rose to speak at the close of the 
fourth night's debate it soon became evident that he no longer 
counted on victory. How, indeed, could he ? He was opposed 
and assailed from all sides. He knew that the Senate of the 
"University of Dublin had condemned his measure as well as 
the Eoman Catholic prelates. He had received a deputation 
of Irish members to announce to him frankly that they could 
not support him. His speech was in remarkable contrast to 
the jubilant tones of Mr. Disraeli's defiant and triumphant 
rhetoric. It was full of dignity and resolve ; but it was the 
dignity of anticipated defeat met without shrinking and with- 
out bravado. A few sentences, in which Mr. Gladstone spoke 
of his severance from the Irish representatives with whom he 
had worked cordially and successfully on the Church and 
Land Bills, were full of a genuine and a noble pathos. Mr. 
Gladstone was the first English Prime Minister who had ever 
really perilled office and popularity to serve the interests of 
Ireland ; it seemed a cruel stroke of fate which made his fall 
from power mainly the result of the Irish vote in the House 
of Commons. The result of the division was waited with 
17* 



394 ^ SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxv. 

breathless anxiety. It was what had been expected. The 
ministry had been defeated by a small majority; 287 had 
voted against the second reading, 284 voted for it. By a 
majority of three the great Liberal administration was practi- 
cally overthrown. 

The ministry did not indeed come to an end just then. 
Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues resigned office, and the 
Queen sent for Mr. Disraeli. But Mr. Disraeli prudently de- 
clined to accept office with the existing House of Commons. 
He had been carefully studying the evidences of Conservative 
reaction, and he felt sure that the time for his party was 
coming. He had had bitter experience of the humiliation of 
a minister who tries to govern without a majority in the House 
of Commons. He could of course form a government, he said, 
and dissolve in May ; but then he had nothing in particular 
to dissolve about. The situation was curious. There were 
two great statesmen disputing, not for office, but how to get 
out of the responsibility of office. The result was that Mr. 
Gladstone and his colleagues had to return to their places and 
go on as best they could. There was nothing else to be done. 
Mr. Disraeli would not accept responsibility just then, and with 
regard to the interests of his party he was acting like a prudent 
man. Mr. Gladstone returned to office. He returned reluc- 
tantly ; he was weary of the work ; he was disappointed ; he had 
suffered in health from the incessant admhiistrative labour to 
which he had always subjected himself with an unsparing and 
almost improvident magnanimity. He must have known that, 
coming back to office under such conditions, he would find hia 
power shaken, his influence much discredited. He bent to the 
necessities of the time, and consented to be Prime Minister 
still. He helped Mr. Fawcett to carry a bill for the abolition 
of tests in Dublin University, as he could do no more just then 
for university education in Ireland. 

The end was near. During the autumn some elections 
happening incidentally turned out against the Liberal party. 
The Conservatives were beginning to be openly triumphant in 
most places. Mr. Gladstone made some modifications in his 
ministry. Mr. Lowe gave up the Chancellorship of the 
Exchequer, in which he had been singularly unsuccessful ; 
Mr. Bruce left the Home Office, in which he had not been 
much of a success. Mr. Gladstone took upon himself the 
offices of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the 



CH. xxv. FALL OF THE GREAT ADMINISTRATION. 395 

Exchequer together, following an example set in former days 
by Peel and other statesmen. Mr. Lowe became Home Secre- 
tary. Mr. Bruce was raised to the peerage as Lord Aberdare, 
and was made President of the Council in the room of the 
Marquis of Kipon, who had resigned. Mr. Childers resigned 
the office of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Mr. 
Bright, whose health had now been restored, came back to 
the Cabinet in charge of the merely nominal business of the 
Duchy. There could be no doubt that there were dissensions 
in the ministry. Mr. Baxter had resigned the office of Secre- 
tary of the Treasury on the ground that he could not get on 
with Mr. Lowe, who had not consulted him with regard to 
certain contracts, and had refused to take his advice. The 
general impression was that Mr. Childers gave up the Chan- 
cellorship of the Duchy because he considered that he had 
claims on the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, which 
Mr. Gladstone now had taken to himself. These various 
changes and the rumours to which they gave birth were not 
calculated to strengthen the public confidence. In truth, the 
Liberal regime was falling to pieces. 

But it was Mr. Gladstone himself who dealt the stroke 
which brought the Liberal Administration to an end. In the 
closing days of 1873 the Conservatives won a seat at Exeter ; 
in the first few days of 1874 they won a seat at Stroud. 
Parliament had actually been summoned for February 5. 
Suddenly, on January 23, Mr. Gladstone made up his mind to 
dissolve Parliament, and seek for a restoration of the authority 
of the Liberal Government by an appeal to the people. The 
country was taken utterly by surprise. Many of Mr. Glad- 
stone's own colleagues had not known what was to be done 
until the announcement was actually made. The feeling all 
over the three kingdoms was one of almost unanimous dis- 
approval. Mr. Gladstone's sudden resolve was openly con- 
demned as petulant and unstatesmanlike ; it was privately 
grumbled at on various personal grounds. Mr. Gladstone had 
surprised the constituencies. We do not know whether the 
constituencies surprised Mr. Gladstone. They certainly sur- 
prised most persons, including themselves. The result of the 
elections was to upset completely the balance of power. In a 
few days the Liberal majority was gone. When the result of 
the polls came to be made up it was found that the Conserva- 
tives had a majority of about fifty, even on the calculation, far 
too favourable to the other side, which counted every Home 



396 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxv. 

Ruler as a Liberal. Mr. Gladstone followed the example set 
by Mr. Disraeli six years before, and at once resigned office. 
The great reforming Liberal Administration was gone. The 
organising energy which had accomplished such marvels 
during three or four resplendent years had spent itself and 
was out of breath. The English constituencies had grown 
weary of the heroic, and would have a change. So sudden a 
fall from power had not up to that time been known in the 
modern political history of the country. 

Had the Liberal Ministers consented to remain in power a 
few days, a very few, longer, they would have been able to 
announce the satisfactory conclusion of a very unsatisfactory 
war. The Ashantee war arose out of a sort of misunderstand- 
ing. The Ashantees are a very fierce and warlike tribe on 
the Gold Coast of Africa. They were at war with England 
in 1824, and in one instance they won an extraordinary 
victory over a British force of about 1,000 men, and carried 
home with them as a trophy the skull of the British Com- 
mander-in-Chief, Sir Charles McCarthy. They were after- 
wards defeated, and a treaty of peace was concluded with them. 
In 1863 a war was begun against the Ashantees prematurely 
and rashly by the Governor of the Gold Coast Settlements, 
and it had to be abandoned owing to the ravages done by 
sickness among our men. In 1872 some Dutch possessions 
on the Gold Coast were transferred by purchase and arrange- 
ment of other kinds to England. The King of Ashantee 
claimed a tribute formerly allowed to him by the Dutch, and 
refused to evacuate the territory ceded to England. He 
attacked the Fantees, a tribe of very worthless allies of ours, 
and a straggling, harassing war began between him and our 
garrisons. The great danger was that if the Ashantees ob- 
tained any considerable success, or seeming success, even for a 
moment, all the surrounding tribes would make common cause 
with them. Sir Garnet Wolseley, who had commanded the 
successful expedition to the Bed Biver region in 1870, was 
sent out to Ashantee. He had a very hard task to perform. 
Of course he could have no difficulty in fighting the Ashantees. 
The weapons and the discipline of the English army put all 
thought of serious battle out of the question. But the whole 
campaign had to be over and done within the limited range of 
the cooler months, or the heat would bring pestilence and 
fever into the field to do battle for the African King. 
Sir Garnet Wolseley and those who fought under him— 



Ctt. xxv. FALL OF THE GREAT ADMINISTRATION. 397 

Bailors, marines, and soldiers, did their work well. They 
defeated the Ashantees wherever they could get at them ; 
they forced their way to Coomassie, compelled the King to 
come to terms, one of the conditions being the prohibition of 
human sacrifices, and they were able to leave the country 
within the appointed time. The success of the campaign was 
a question of days and almost of hours ; and the victory was 
snatched out of the very jaws of approaching sun and fever. 
Sir Garnet Wolseley sailed from England on September 12, 
1873, and returned to Portsmouth, having accomplished all 
his objects, on March 21, 1874. 



CHAPTEE XXVI. 

LORD BEACONSFIELD. 

Mb. Disraeli was not long in forming a Ministry. Lord 
Cairns became Lord Chancellor. Lord Derby was made 
Foreign Secretary, an appointment which gratified sober- 
minded men. Lord Salisbury was entrusted with the charge 
of the Indian Department. This too was an appointment 
which gave satisfaction outside the range of the Conservative 
party as well as within it. During his former administration 
of the India Office, Lord Salisbury had shown great ability 
and seK-command, and he had acquired a reputation for firm- 
ness of character and large and liberal views. He was now 
and for some time after looked upon as the most rising man 
and the most high-minded politician on the Conservative side. 
The country was pleased to see that Mr. Disraeli made no 
account of the dislike that Lord Salisbury had evidently felt 
towards him at one time, and of the manner in which he had 
broken away from the Conservative Ministry at the time of 
the Eeform Bill of 1867. Lord Carnarvon became Colonial 
Secretary. Mr. Cross, a Lancashire lawyer, who had never 
been in office of any kind before, was lifted into the position of 
Home Secretary. Mr. Gathorne Hardy was made Secretary 
for War, and Mr. Ward Hunt First Lord of the Admiralty. 
Sir Stafford Northcote, who had been trained to finance by 
Mr. Gladstone, accepted the office of Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer. The Duke of Kichmond as Lord President of the 
Council made a safe, inoffensive, and respectable leader of the 
Government in the House of Lords. 



398 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxvi. 

The Liberals seemed to have received a stunning blow. 
The whole party reeled under it, and did not appear capable 
for the moment of rallying against the shock. To accumulate 
the difficulties, Mr. Gladstone suddenly announced his inten- 
tion of retiring from the position of leader of the Liberal 
party. This seemed the one step needed to complete the dis- 
organisation of the party. The Opposition were for a while 
apparently not only without a leader but even without a policy, 
or a motive for existence. The Ministry had succeeded to a 
handsome surplus of nearly six millions. It would be hardly 
possible under such circumstances to bring in a budget which 
should be wholly unsatisfactory. Mr. Ward Hunt contrived 
indeed to get up a momentary scare about the condition of the 
navy. When introducing the Navy Estimates he talked in 
tones of ominous warning about his determination not to have 
a fleet on paper, or to put up with phantom ships. The words 
sent a wild thrill of alarm through the country. The sudden 
impression prevailed that Mr. Hunt had made a fearful dis- 
covery — had found out that the country had really no navy ; 
that he would be compelled to set about constructing one out 
of hand. Mr. Ward Hunt, however, when pressed for an ex- 
planation, explained that he really meant nothing. It appeared 
that he had only been expressing his disapproval on abstract 
grounds of the maintenance of inefficient navies, and never 
meant to convey the idea that England's navy was not efficient, 
and the country breathed again. 

Two new measures belonging to the same order disturbed 
for a while the calm which prevailed in Parliament now that 
the Conservatives had it all their own way, and the Liberals 
were crushed. One was the Bill for the abolition of Church 
Patronage in Scotland ; the other, the Public Worship Bill 
for England. The Church Patronage Bill, which was intro- 
duced by the Government, took away the appointment of 
ministers in the Church of Scotland from lay patrons, and 
gave it to the congregation of the parish church, a congrega- 
tion to consist of the communicants and ' such other adherents ' 
as the Kirk Session, acting under the control of the General 
Assembly, might determine to allow. Such a measure might 
have prevented the great secession from the Church of Scotland 
under Dr. Chalmers in 1843 ; but it was useless lor any pur- 
pose of reconciliation in 1874. Its introduction became of some 
present interest to the House of Commons, because it drew 
Mr. Gladstone into debate for the first time since the opening 



CH. xxvT. LORD BEAC0NSF1ELD. 399 

nights of the session. He opposed the Bill, but of course in 
vain. Mr. Disraeli complimented him on his reappearance, 
and kindly expressed a hope that he would favour the House 
with his presence as often as possible ; indeed, was quite 
friendly and patronising to his fallen rival. 

The Bill for the Begulation of Public Worship was not a 
Government measure. It was introduced into the House 
of Lords by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and into the 
House of Commons by Mr. Kussell Gurney. It was strongly 
disliked and publicly condemned by some members of the 
Cabinet ; but after it had gone its way fairly towards success 
Mr. Disraeli showed a disposition to adopt it, and even to 
speak as if he had had the responsibility of it from the first. 
The bill illustrated a curious difficulty into which the Church of 
England had been brought, in consequence partly of its con- 
nection with the State. The influence of the Oxford move- 
ment had set thought stirring everywhere within the Church. 
It appealed to much that was philosophical, much that was 
artistic and aesthetic, and at the same time to much that was 
sceptical. One body of Churchmen, the Tractarians as they 
were called, were anxious to maintain the unity of the Christian 
Church, and would not admit that the Church of England 
began to exist with the Eeformation. They claimed apos- 
tolical succession for their bishops ; they declared that the 
clergymen of the Church of England were priests in the 
true spiritual sense. The Evangelicals maintained that 
the Bible was the sole authority; the Tractarians held 
that the New Testament derived its authority from the 
Church. The Tractarians therefore claimed a right to 
examine very freely into the meaning of doubtful passages 
in the Scriptures, and insisted that if the authority of the 
Church were recognised as that of the Heaven-appointed 
interpreter, all difficulty about the reconciliation of the scrip- 
tural writings with the discoveries of modern science would 
necessarily disappear. The Tractarian party became divided 
into two sections. One section inclined towards what may 
almost be called free thought; the other, to the sentiments 
and the ceremonies of the Eoman Catholic Church. The 
astonished Evangelicals saw with dismay that the Church as 
they knew it seemed likely to be torn asunder. The Evan- 
gelicals had their strongest supporters among the middle and 
the lower-middle classes ; the others found favour at once 
among the rich, who went in for culture, and among the very 



400 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxvi, 

poor. The law, which was often invoked, proved impotent ta 
deal with the difficulty. It was found impossible to put down 
Ritualism by law. The law was not by any means so clear 
as some of the opponents of Ritualism would have wished it. 
Moreover, even in cases where a distinct condemnation was 
obtained from a court of law there was often no way of putting 
it into execution. In more than one case a clergyman was 
actually deposed by authority, and his successor appointed. 
The congregation held fast by the delinquent and would not 
admit the new man. The offender remained at his post just 
as if nothing had happened. It was clear that if all this went 
on much longer, the Establishment must come to an end. 
One party would renounce State control in order to get 
freedom; another would repudiate State control because it 
proved unable to maintain authority. 

To remedy all this disorder, the Archbishop of Canterbury 
brought in his bill. Its object was to give offended parishioners 
a ready way of invoking the authority of the bishop, and to 
enable the bishop to prohibit by his own mandate any prac- 
tices which he considered improper, or else to submit the 
question to the decision of a judge specially appointed to 
decide in such cases. The discussions were remarkable for 
the divisions of opinion they showed on both sides of the 
House. Lord Salisbury opposed the Bill in the House of 
Lords ; Mr. Hardy condemned it in the House of Commons. 
It was condemned as too weak; it was denounced as too 
strong. Mr. Gladstone came forward with all the energy of 
his best days to oppose it, on the ground that it threatened to 
deprive the Church of all her spiritual freedom merely to get 
a more easy way of dealing with the practices of a few eccen- 
tric men. Sir William Harcourt, who had been Solicitor- 
General under Mr. Gladstone, rushed to the defence of the 
bill, attacked Mr. Gladstone vehemently, called upon Mr. 
Disraeli to prove himself the leader of the English people, and 
in impassioned sentences reminded him that he had put his 
hand to the plough and must not draw it back. Mr. Gladstone 
dealt with his late subordinate in a few sentences of good- 
humoured contempt, in which he expressed his special sur- 
prise at the sudden and portentous display of erudition which 
Sir William Harcourt had poured out upon the House. Sir 
William Harcourt was even then a distinctly rising man. He 
was an effective and somewhat overbearing speaker, with a 
special aptitude for the kind of elementary argument and the 



CM. xxvi. LORD BEACOMSFIELD. 401 

knock-down personalities which the House of Commons can 
never fail to understand. The House liked to listen to him. 
He had a loud voice, and never gave his hearers the trouble of 
having to strain their ears or their attention to follow him. 
His arguments were never subtle enough to puzzle the simplest 
country gentleman for one moment. His quotations had no 
distracting novelty about them, but fell on the ear with a 
familiar and friendly sound. His jokes were unmistakable 
in their meaning ; his whole style was good strong black and 
white. He could get up a case admirably. He astonished the 
House, and must probably even have astonished himself, by the 
vast amount of ecclesiastical knowledge which with only the 
preparation of a day or two he was able to bring to bear upon 
the most abstruse or perplexed questions of Church govern- 
ment. He had the advantage of being sure of everything. 
He poured out his eloquence and his learning on the most 
difficult ecclesiastical questions with the resolute assurance of 
one who had given a life to the study. Perhaps we ought 
rather to say that he showed the resolute assurance which only 
belongs to one who has not given much of his life to the study 
of the subject. Mr. Disraeli responded so far to Sir William 
Harcourt's stirring appeal as to make hhnself the patron of the 
bill and the leader of the movement in its favour. Mr. Disraeli 
saw that by far the greater body of English public opinion out 
of doors was against the Eitualists, and that for the moment 
public opinion accepted the whole controversy as a dispute for 
or against Kitualism. The course taken by the Prime Minister 
further enlivened the debates by bringing about a keen little 
passage of arms between him and Lord Salisbury, whom Mr. 
Disraeli described as a great master of jibes and flouts and 
jeers. The bill was passed in both Houses of Parliament, and 
obtained the Eoyal assent almost at the end of the session. 

A measure for the protection of seamen against the danger 
of being sent to sea in vessels unfit for the voyage was forced 
upon the Government by Mr. Plimsoll. Mr. Plimsoll was a 
man who had pushed his way through life by ability and hard 
work into independence and wealth. He was full of human 
sympathy, and was especially interested in the welfare of the 
poor. Mr. PlhnsolTs attention happened to be turned to the 
condition of our merchant seamen, and he found that the state 
of the law left them almost absolutely at the mercy of unscru- 
pulous and selfish shipowners. It was easy to insure a vessel, 
and once insured it mattered little to such a shipowner how 



402 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxVI. 

soon she went to the bottom. The law gave to magistrates 
the power of sending to prison the seaman who for any reason 
refused to fulfil his contract and go to sea. The criminal law 
bore upon him ; only the civil law applied to the employer. 
Mr. Plimsoll actually found cases of seamen sentenced to 
prison because they refused to sail in crazy ships, which, when 
they put to sea, never touched a port but went down in mid- 
ocean. Letters were found in the pockets of drowned seamen 
which showed that they had made their friends aware of their 
forebodings as to the condition of the vessel that was to be 
their coffin. Mr. Plimsoll began a regular crusade against 
certain shipowners. He published a book called, ' Our Seamen, 
an Appeal,' in which he made the most startling, and it must 
be added the most sweeping, charges. Courts of law were 
invoked to deal with his assertions ; the authority of Parlia- 
ment was called on to protect shipowning members against 
the violence of the irrepressible philanthropist. Mr. Plimsoll 
was clearly wrong in some of his charges against individuals, 
but a very general opinion prevailed that he was only too just 
in his condemnation of the system. Mr. Plimsoll brought in 
a bill for the better protection of the lives of seamen. It pro- 
posed a compulsory survey of all ships before leaving port, 
various precautions against overloading, the restriction of 
deck-loading, and the compulsory painting of a load line, the 
position of which was to be determined by legislation. This 
measure was strongly opposed by the shipowners in the House, 
and by many others as well as they, who regarded it as too 
stringent, and who also feared that by putting too much re- 
sponsibility on the Government it would take all responsibility 
off the shipowners. The bill came to the test of a division 
on June 24, 1874, and was rejected by a majority of only 
three, 170 voting for it and 173 against. The Government 
then recognising the importance of the subject, and the strong 
feeling which prevailed in the country with regard to it, 
introduced a Merchant Shipping Bill of their own in the 
session of 1875. It did not go nearly so far as Mr. Plimsoll 
would have desired, but it did promise to be at least part of a 
series of legislation which further developed might have 
accomplished the object. Such as it was, however, the 
Government did not press it, and towards the end of July Mr. 
Disraeli announced that they would not go further that year 
with the measure. 

The 22nd of July saw one of the most extraordinary scenea 



CH. xxvi. LORD BEACONSFIELD. 403 

that ever took place in the House of Commons. Mr. Plimsoll, 
under the influence of disappointment and of anger, seemed 
to have lost all self-control. He denounced some of the ship- 
owners of that House ; he threatened to name and expose 
them ; he called them villains who had sent brave men to 
death. When interrupted by the Speaker, and told that he 
must not apply the term villains to members of the House, he 
repeated again and again, and in the most vociferous tones, 
that they were villains, and that he would abide by his words. 
He refused to recognise the authority of the Speaker. He 
shouted, shook his fist at the leading members of the Govern- 
ment, and rushed out of the House in a state of wild excite- 
ment. Thereupon Mr. Disraeli moved, ' that the Speaker do 
reprimand Mr. Plimsoll for his disorderly behaviour.' Mr. 
A. M. Sullivan, one of the Home Eule Members, returned for 
the first time at the general election, a man of remarkable 
eloquence and of high character, interposed on behalf of Mr. 
Plimsoll. He pleaded that Mr. Plimsoll was seriously ill and 
hardly able to account for his actions, owing to mental excite- 
ment arising from an overwrought system, and from the 
intensity of his zeal in the cause of the merchant seamen. 
He asked that a week should be given Mr. Plimsoll to consider 
his position. Mr. Fawcett and other members made a similar 
appeal, and the Government consented to postpone a decision 
of the question for a week. Mr. Plimsoll had offended against 
the rules, the traditions, and the dignity of the House, 
and many even of those who sympathised with his general 
purpose thought he had damaged his cause and ruined his 
individual position. Nothing, however, could be more extra- 
ordinary and unexpected than the result. It was one of those 
occasions in which the public out of doors showed that they 
could get to the real heart of a question more quickly and more 
clearly than Parliament itself. Out of doors it was thoroughly 
understood that Mr. Plimsoll was too sweeping in his charges ; 
that he was entirely mistaken in some of them ; that he had 
denounced men who did not deserve denunciation ; that his 
behaviour in the House of Commons was a gross offence 
against order. But the difference between the public and the 
House of Commons was, that while understanding and ad- 
mitting all this, the public clearly saw that as to the main 
question at issue Mr. Plimsoll was entirely in the right. 
The country was therefore determined to stand by him. 

Great meetings were held all over England during the next 



404 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxvi. 

few days, at every one of which those who were present pledged 
themselves to assist Mr. Plimsoll in his general object and 
policy. The result was that when Mr. Plimsoll appeared in 
the House of Commons the week after, and in a very full and 
handsome manner made apology for his offences against Par- 
liamentary order, it was apparent to everyone in the House 
and out of it that he was master of the situation, and that 
the Government would have to advance with more or less rapid 
strides along the path where he was leading. Finally, the 
Government brought in, and forcibly pushed through, a Mer- 
chant Shipping Bill, which met for the moment some of the 
difficulties of the case. The Government afterwards promised 
to supplement it by legislation, regulating in some way the 
system of maritime insurances. Other things, however, in- 
terfered with the carrying out of the Government proposals, 
and the regulation of maritime insurance was forgotten. 

The Government seemed for a while inclined to keep 
plodding steadily on with quiet schemes of domestic legisla- 
tion. They tinkered at a measure for the security of improve- 
ments made by agricultural tenants. They made it purely 
permissive, and therefore thoroughly worthless. This one 
defect tainted many of their schemes of domestic reform — 
this inclination to make every reform permissive. It seemed 
to be thought a clever stroke of management to introduce a 
measure professedly for the removal of some inequality or 
other grievance, and then to make it permissive and allow all 
parties concerned to contract themselves out of it. Mr. Cross, 
the Home Secretary, however, proved a very efficient Minister, 
and introduced many useful schemes of legislation, among the 
rest an Artisans' Dwelling Bill, the object of which was to enable 
local authorities to pull down houses unfit for human habitation 
and rebuild on the sites. The Government made experiments 
in reaction here and there. They restored the appellate juris- 
diction of the House of Lords, which had seemed actually 
doomed. They got into some trouble by issuing a circular to 
captains of war vessels on the subject of the reception of slaves 
on board their ships. The principle which the circular laid 
down was in substance a full recognition of the rights of a 
slave-owner over a fugitive slave. The country rose in indig- 
nation against this monstrous reversal of England's time- 
honoured policy ; and the circular was withdrawn and a new 
one issued. This too proved unsatisfactory. It was impos- 
sible for the Government to resist the popular demand ; soma 



CH. xxvi. LORD BBACOJSrSFIELD. 405 

of their own men in the House of Commons fell away from 
them and insisted that the old principle must be kept up, and 
that the slave -owner shall not take his slave from under the 
shadow of the English flag. 

All this time Mr. Gladstone had withdrawn from the paths 
of Parliamentary life and had taken to polemical literature. 
He was stirring up a heated controversy with Cardinal 
Manning, Dr. Newman, and other great controversialists, by 
endeavouring to prove that absolute obedience to the Catholic 
Church was henceforward inconsistent with the principles of 
freedom, and that the doctrine of papal infallibility was every- 
where the enemy of liberty. Grave politicians were not a little 
scandalised at the position taken by a statesman who onljf 
the other day was Prime Minister. It seemed clear that Mr. 
Gladstone never meant to take any leading part in politics 
again. Surely, it was said, if he had the remotest idea of 
entering the political field anew, he never would have thus 
gratuitously given offence to the Eoman Catholic subjects 
of the Queen and to all the Catholic Sovereigns and Ministers 
of Europe. Most of his friends shook their heads ; most of 
his enemies were delighted. There was some difficulty at first 
about the choice of a successor to Mr. Gladstone. Two men 
stood intellectually high above all other possible competitors — 
Mr. Bright and Mr. Lowe. But it was well known that Mr. 
Bright's health would not allow him to undertake such labo- 
rious duties, and Mr. Lowe was universally assumed to have 
none of the leader's qualities. Sir William Harcourt had not 
yet weight enough ; neither had Mr. Goschen. The real choice 
was between Mr. Forster and Lord Hartington. Mr. Forster, 
however, knew that he had estranged the Nonconformists from 
him by the course he had taken in his education measures, and 
he withdrew from what he thought an untenable position. 
Lord Hartington was therefore arrived at by a sort of process 
of exhaustion. He proved much better than his promise. He 
had a robust, straightforward nature, and by constant prac- 
tice he made himself an effective debater. Men liked the 
courage and the candid admission of his own deficiencies, with 
which he braced himself up to his most difficult task — to take 
the place of Gladstone in debate and to confront Disraeli. 

A change soon came over the spirit of the Administration. 
It began to be seen more and more clearly that Mr. Disraeli 
had not come into office merely to consider prosaic measures 
of domestic legislation. His inclinations were all for the 



406 A SHORT HISTORY OF OVR OWN TIMES, CH. xxvi. 

broader and more brilliant fields of foreign politics. The 
marked contrast between the political aptitudes and tastes 
of Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone came hi to influence 
still further the difference between the policy of the new 
Government and that of its predecessor. Mr. Gladstone 
delighted in the actual work and business of administration. 
Now Mr. Disraeli had neither taste nor aptitude for the details 
of administration. He enjoyed administration on the large 
scale ; he loved political debate ; he liked to make a great 
speech. But when he was not engaged in his favourite work 
he preferred to be doing nothing. It was natural therefore 
that Mr. Gladstone's Administration should be one of practical 
work ; that it should introduce Bills to deal with perplexed 
and complicated grievances ; that it should take care to keep 
the finances of the country in good condition. Mr. Disraeli 
had no personal interest in such things. He loved to feed 
his mind on gorgeous imperial fancies. It pleased him to 
think that England was, what he would persist in calling her, 
an Asiatic power, and that he was administering the affairs of 
a great Oriental Empire. Mr. Disraeli had never until now 
had an opportunity of showing what his own style of states- 
manship would be. He had always been in office only, but 
not in power. Now he had for the first time a strong majority 
behind him. He could do as he liked. He had the full con- 
fidence of the Sovereign. His party were now wholly devoted 
to him. They began to regard him as infallible. Even those 
who detested still feared ; men believed in his power none the 
less because they had no faith in his policy. In the House of 
Commons he had no longer any rival to dread in debate. Mr. 
Gladstone had withdrawn from the active business of politics ; 
Mr. Bright was not strong enough in physical health to care 
much for controversy ; there was no one else who could by 
any possibility be regarded as a proper adversary for Mr. 
Disraeli. The new Prime Minister therefore had everything 
his own way. He soon showed what sort of statesmanship he 
liked best. In politics as in art the weaknesses of the master of 
a school are most clearly seen in the performances of his imita- 
tors and admirers. A distinguished member of Mr. Disraeli's 
Cabinet proclaimed that since the Conservatives came into 
office there had been something stirring in the very air which 
spoke of imperial enterprise. The Elizabethan days were 
to be restored, it was proudly declared. England was to re- 
sume her high place among the nations. She was to make her 



CH. xxvi. LORD BEACONSFIELD; 407 

influence felt all over the world, but more especially on the 
European continent. The Cabinets and Chancelleries of 
Europe were to learn that nothing was to be done any more 
without the authority of England. ' A spirited foreign policy ' 
was to be inaugurated, a new era was to begin. 

Perhaps the first indication of the new foreign policy was 
given by the purchase of the shares which the Khedive of 
Egypt held in the Suez Canal. The Khedive of Egypt held 
nearly half the 400,000 original shares in the Canal, and the 
Khedive was going every day faster and faster on the road to 
ruin. He was on the brink of bankruptcy. His 176,000 
shares came into the market ; and on November 25, 1875, the 
world was astonished by the news that the English Govern- 
ment had turned stock-jobber and bought them for four millions 
sterling. The idea was not the Government's own. The 
editor of a London evening paper, Mr. Frederick Greenwood, 
was the man to whom the thought first occurred. He made 
it known to the Prime Minister, and Mr. Disraeli was caught 
by the proposition, and the shares were instantly bought up 
in the name of the English Government. Seldom in our time 
has any act on the part of a Government been received with 
such general approbation. The London newspapers broke 
into a chorus of applause. The London clubs were delighted. 
The air rang with praises of the courage and spirit shown by 
the Ministry. If here and there a faint voice was raised to 
suggest that the purchase was a foolish proceeding, that it 
was useless, that it was undignified, a shout of offended 
patriotism drowned the ignoble remonstrance. The act is of 
historical importance as the first of a series of strokes made by 
the Government in foreign policy, each of which came in the 
nature of a surprise to Parliament and the country. It is 
probable that Mr. Disraeli counted upon making his Govern- 
ment popular by affording to the public at intervals the exciting 
luxury of a new sensation. The public were undoubtedly 
rather tired of having been so long quiet and prosperous. 
They liked to know that their Government was doing some- 
thing. Mr. Disraeli led the fashion, and stimulated the public 
taste. The Government tried to establish a South African 
Confederation, and sent out Mr. Froude, the romantic histo- 
rian, to act as the representative of their policy. The Govern- 
ment made some changes in the relations of the India Office 
here to the Viceroy in Calcutta, which gave much greater 
power into the hands of the Secretary for India. One im- 



4o8 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxvi 

mediate result of this was the retirement of Lord Northbrook, 
a prudent and able man, before the term of his administration 
had actually arrived. Mr. Disraeli gave the country another 
little surprise. He appointed Lord Lytton Viceroy of India. 
Lord Lytton had been previously known chiefly as the writer 
of pretty and sensuous verse, and the author of one or two 
showy and feeble novels. The world was a good deal astonished 
at the appointment of such a man to an office which had 
strained the intellectual energies of men like Dalhousie and 
Canning and Elgin. But people were in general willing to 
believe that Mr. Disraeli knew Lord Lytton to be possessed of 
a gift of administration which the world outside had not any 
chance of 'discerning in him. There was something too which 
gratified many persons in the appointment. It seemed gracious 
and kindly of Mr. Disraeli thus to recognise and exalt the son 
of his old friend and companion in arms. There was a feeling 
all over England which wished well to the appointment and 
sincerely hoped it might prove a success. 

Another little sensation was created by the invention of a 
new title for the Queen. At the beginning of the Session of 
1876 Mr. Disraeli announced that the Queen was to be called 
* Empress of India.' A strong dislike was felt to this super- 
fluous and tawdry addition to the ancient style of the sovereigns 
of England. The educated feeling of the country rose in revolt 
against this preposterous innovation. Some of the debates in 
the House of Commons were full of fire and spirit, and recalled 
the memory of more stirring times when the Liberal party 
was in heart and strength. Mr. Lowe spoke against the new 
title with a vivacity and a bitterness of sarcasm that reminded 
listeners of his famous opposition to the Eeform Bill of 1866. 
Mr. Joseph Cowen, Member for Newcastle, who had been in 
Parliament for some sessions without making any mark, sud- 
denly broke into the debates with a speech which at once won 
him the name of an orator, and which a leading member of 
the Government, Mr. Gathorne Hardy, described as having 
' electrified ' the House. Mr. Disraeli chaffed the Opposition 
rather than reasoned with it. He cited one justification of 
the title, a letter from a young lady at school who had directed 
his attention to the fact that in ' Guy's Geography ' the Queen 
was already described as Empress of India. This style of 
argument did not add much to the dignity of the debate. Mr. 
Lowe spoke with justifiable anger and contempt of the Prime 
Minister's introducing ' the lispings of the nursery ' into a 



CH. xxvi. . LORD BEACONSFIELD. 409 

grave discussion, and asked whether Mr. Disraeli wished to 
make the House in general think as meanly of the subject as 
he did himself. The Government, of course, carried their 
point. They deferred so far to public feeling as to put into 
the Act a provision against the use of the Imperial title in the 
United Kingdom. There was indeed a desire that its use 
should be prohibited everywhere except in India, and most of 
the members of the Opposition were at first under the impres- 
sion that the Government had undertaken to do so much. 
But the only restriction introduced into the Act had reference 
to the employment of the additional title in these islands. 
The unlucky subject was the occasion of a new and a some- 
what unseemly dispute afterwards. In a speech which he 
delivered to a public meeting at East Ketford, Mr. Lowe made 
an unfortunate statement to the effect that the Queen had 
endeavoured to induce two former Ministers to confer upon 
her this new title and had not succeeded. Mr. Lowe proved to 
be absolutely wrong in his assertion. No attempt of the kind 
had ever been made by the Queen. Mr. Disraeli found his 
enemy delivered into his hands. The question was inciden- 
tally and indirectly brought up in the House of Commons on 
May 2, 1876, and Mr. Disraeli seized the opportunity. He 
denounced Mr. Lowe, thundered at him from across the table, 
piled up a heap of negative evidence to show that his assertion 
could not be true, and at the very close of his speech came 
down on the hapless offender with the crushing announce- 
ment that he had the authority of the Queen herself to con- 
tradict the statement. Mr. Lowe sat like one crushed, while 
Mr. Disraeli roared at him and banged the table at him. He 
said nothing that night ; but on the following Thursday even- 
ing he made an apology, which assuredly did not want com- 
pleteness or humility. The title which was the occasion for 
so much debate has not come into greater popular favour since 
that time. The country soon forgot all about the matter. 
More serious questions were coming up to engage the atten- 
tion of the public. 

When Mr. Disraeli was pressed during the debates on the 
Royal Title to give some really serious reason for the change, 
it was observed as significant that he made reference more or 
less vague to the necessity of asserting the position of the 
Sovereign of England as supreme ruler over the whole empire 
of India. Mr. Disraeli had purposely touched a chord which 
was sure to vibrate all over the country. The necessity to 
16 



410 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxvi. 

which lie alluded was the necessity of setting up the flag of 
England on the citadel of England's Asiatic Empire as a 
warning to the one enemy whom the English people believed 
they had reason to dread. Mr. Disraeli had raised what has 
been called the Eussian spectre. A great crisis was now again 
at hand. During all the interval since the Crimean War 
Turkey had been occupied in throwing away every opportunity 
for her political and social reorganisation. There had been 
insurrections in Crete, in the Herzegovina, in other parts of the 
provinces misgoverned by Turkey ; and they had been put down, 
whenever the Porte was strong enough, with a barbarous 
severity. Eussia meanwhile was returning to the position she 
occupied before the Crimean War. She had lately been making 
rapid advances into Central Asia. Post after post which were 
once believed to be secure from her approach were dropping 
into her hands. Her goal of one day became her starting-point 
of the next. Early in July 1875, Lord Derby received an 
account of the disturbances in the Herzegovina, and something 
like an organised insurrection in Bosnia. The provinces in- 
habited by men of alien race and religion over which Turkey 
rules have always been the source of her weakness. Fate has 
given to the most incapable and worthless Government in the 
world the task of ruling over a great variety of nationalities 
and of creeds that agree in hardly anything but in their com- 
mon detestation of Ottoman rule. The Slav dreads and detests 
the Greek. The Greek despises the Slav. The Albanian objects 
alike to Slav and to Greek. The Mohammedan Albanian detests 
the Catholic Albanian. The Slavs are drawn towards Eussia 
by affinity of race and of religion. But this very fact, which 
makes in one sense their political strength, brings with it a 
certain condition of weakness, because by making them more 
formidable to Greeks and to Germans it increases the dislike of 
their growing power, and the determination to oppose it. The 
settlement made by the Crimean War had since that time 
been gradually breaking down. Servia was an independent 
State in all but the name. The Danubian provinces, which 
were to have been governed by separate rulers, united them- 
selves first under one ruler and then in one political system, 
and at last became the sovereign State of Eoumania under the 
Prussian Prince, Charles of Hohenzoliern. Thus the result 
which most of the European Powers at the time of the Con- 
gress of Paris endeavoured to prevent was successfully accom- 
plished in spite of their inclinations. The efforts to keep 



CH. xxvi. LORD BEACONSFIELD. 411 

Bosnia and Herzegovina in quiet subjection to the Sultan 
proved a miserable failure. The insurrection which now broke 
out in Herzegovina spread with rapidity. The Turkish states- 
men insisted that it was receiving help not only from Eussia 
but from the subjects of Austria as well as from Servia and 
Montenegro. An appeal was made to the English Govern- 
ment to use its influence with Austria in order to prevent the 
insurgents from receiving any assistance from across the 
Austrian frontier. Servia and Montenegro were appealed to 
in a similar manner. Lord Derby seems to have acted with 
indecision and with feebleness. He does not appear to have 
appreciated the immediate greatness of the crisis, and he 
offended popular feeling, and even the public conscience, by 
urging on the Porte that the best they could do was to put 
down the insurrection as quickly as possible, and not allow 
it to swell to the magnitude of a question of European 
interest. 

The insurrection continued to spread, and at last it was 
determined by some of the Western Powers that the time had 
come for European intervention. Count Andrassy, the Aus- 
trian Minister, drew up a Note, addressed to the Porte, in 
which Austria, Germany, and Eussia united in a declaration 
that the promises of reform made by the Porte had not been 
carried into effect, and that some combined action by the 
Powers of Europe was necessary to insist on the fulfilment of 
the many engagements which Turkey had made and broken. 
This Note was dated December 30, 1875, and it was commu- 
nicated to the Powers which had signed the Treaty of Paris. 
France and Italy were ready at once to join it ; but England 
delayed. In fact Lord Derby held off so long that it was not 
until he had received a despatch from the Porte itself request- 
ing his Government to join in the Note, that he at last con- 
sented to take part in the remonstrance. Eightly or wrongly 
the statesmen of Constantinople had got it into their heads 
that England was their devoted friend, bound by her own 
interests to 'protect them against whatever opposition. In- 
stead therefore of regarding England's co-operation in the 
Andrassy Note as one other influence brought to compel them 
to fulfil their engagements, they seem to have accepted it as 
a secret force working on their side to enable them to escape 
from their responsibilities. Lord Derby joined in the An- 
drassy Note. It was sent to the Porte. The Ottoman 
Government promised to carry out in the readiest manner the 



412 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxvi. 

suggestions which the Note contained, and did nothing more 
than promise. After a few weeks it became perfectly evident 
that she had not only done nothing, but had never intended 
to do anything. Kussia, therefore, proposed that the three 
Imperial Ministers of the Continent should meet at Berlin 
and consider what steps should be taken in order to make the 
Andrassy Note a reality. A document, called the Berlin 
Memorandum, was drawn up, in which the three Powers pro- 
posed to consider the measures by which to enforce on Turkey 
the fulfilment of her broken promises. It was distinctly 
implied that should Turkey fail to comply, force would be 
used to compel her. But, on the other hand, it is clear that 
this was a menace which would of itself have ensured the 
object. It is out of the question to suppose that Turkey would 
have thought of resisting the concerted action of England, 
France, Austria, Germany, Bussia, and Italy. 

Unfortunately, however, Lord Derby and the English 
Government refused to join in the Berlin Memorandum. The 
refusal of England was fatal to the project. The Memoran- 
dum was never presented. Concert between the European 
Powers was for a time at an end. From that moment every- 
one in Western Europe knew that war was certain in the East. 
A succession of startling events kept public attention on the 
strain. There was an outbreak of Mussulman fanaticism at 
Salonica, and the French and German Consuls were mur- 
dered. A revolutionary demonstration took place in Constan- 
tinople, and the Sultan Abdul Aziz was dethroned. The 
miserable Abdul Aziz committed suicide in a day or two after. 
This was the Sultan who had been received in England with 
so much official ceremony and public acclaim. His nephew 
Murad was made Sultan in his place. Murad reigned only 
three months and was then dethroned, and his brother Hamid 
put in his place. Suddenly the attention of the English 
public was called away to events more terrible than palace 
revolutions in Constantinople. An insurrection had broken 
out in Bulgaria, and the Turkish Government sent large 
numbers of Bashi-Bazouks and other irregular troops to crush 
it. They did not, however, stay their hand when the insur- 
rection had been crushed, depression soon turned into 
massacre. Bumours began to reach Constantinople of hideous 
wholesale murders of women and children committed in Bul- 
garia. The Constantinople correspondent of the Daily News 
investigated the evidence, and found it but too tme. In a few 



ch. xxvi. LORD BEACONSFIELD. 413 

days after accounts were laid before the English public of the 
deeds which ever since have been known as • the Bulgarian 
atrocities.' 

Mr. Disraeli at first "treated these terrible stories with a 
levity which jarred harshly on the ears of almost all his list- 
eners. It was plain that he did not believe them or attach 
any importance to them. He took no trouble to examine the 
testimony on which they rested. He, therefore, thought him- 
self warranted in dealing with them as if they were merely 
stories to laugh at. Mr. Disraeli had always the faculty of 
persuading himself to believe or disbelieve anything according 
as he liked. But the subject proved to be far too serious for 
light-minded treatment. Mr. Baring, the English Consul, 
sent out specially to Bulgaria to make inquiries, and who was 
supposed to be in general sympathy with Turkey, reported that 
no fewer than twelve thousand persons had been killed in the 
district of Philippopolis. The defenders of the Turks insisted 
that the only deaths were those which took place in fight ; 
insurgents on one side, Turkish soldiers on the other. But 
Mr. Baring, as well as Mr. MacGahan, the Daily News cor- 
respondent, saw whole masses of the dead bodies of women 
and children piled up in places where the corpses of no com- 
batants were to be seen. The women and children were simply 
massacred. The Turkish Government may not have known 
at first of the deeds that were done by their soldiers. But it 
is certain that after the facts had been forced upon their atten- 
tion, they conferred new honours upon the chief perpetrators 
of the crimes which shocked the moral sense of all Europe. 

Mr. Bright happily described the agitation which followed 
in England as an uprising of the English people. At first it 
was an uprising without a leader. Soon, however, it had a 
chief of incomparable energy and power. Mr. Gladstone 
came out of his semi-retirement. He flung himself into the 
agitation against Turkey with the impassioned energy of a 
youth. He made speeches in the House of Commons and out 
of it ; he attended monster meetings indoors and out of 
doors ; he published pamphlets, he wrote letters, he brought 
forward motions in Parliament ; he denounced the crimes of 
Turkey, and the policy which would support Turkey, with an 
eloquence that for a time set England aflame. After a while 
no doubt there set in a sort of reaction against the fervent 
mood. The country could not long continue in this white 
heat of excitement. Mr. Disraeli and his supporters were able 



414 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxvi. 

to work with great effect on that strong deep-rooted feeling of 
the modern Englishman, his distrust and dread of Russia. 
Mr. Gladstone had in his pamphlet, * Bulgarian Horrors, and 
the Question of the East,' insisted that the only way to secure 
any permanent good for the Christian provinces of Turkey 
was to turn the Turkish officials ' bag and baggage ' out of 
them. The cry went forth that he had called for the expulsion 
of the Turks from Europe, and that the moment the Turks 
went out of Constantinople the Russians must come in. 
Nothing could have been better suited to rouse up reaction 
and alarm. A sudden and strong revulsion of feeling took 
place in favour of the Government. Mr. Gladstone was 
honestly regarded by millions of Englishmen as the friend and 
the instrument of Russia, Mr. Disraeli as the champion of 
England, and the enemy of England's enemy. 

Mr. Disraeli ? By this time there was no Mr. Disraeli. 
The 11th of August, 1876, was an important day in the par- 
liamentary history of England. Mr. Disraeli made then his 
last speech in the House of Commons. He sustained and 
defended the policy of the Government as an Imperial policy, 
the object of which was to maintain the Empire of England. 
The House of Commons little knew that this speech was the 
last it was to hear from him. The secret was well kept. 
It was made known only to the newspapers that night. Next 
morning all England knew that Benjamin Disraeli had 
become Earl of Beaconsfield. Everybody was well satisfied 
that if Mr. Disraeli liked an earldom he should have it. His 
political career had had claims enough to any reward of the 
kind that his Sovereign could bestow. If he had battled for 
honour it was but fair that he should have the prize. Coming 
as it did just then the announcement of his elevation to the 
peerage seemed like a defiance flung in the face of those who 
would arraign his policy. The attacks made on Mr. Disraeli 
were to be answered by Lord Beaconsfield ; his enemies had 
become his footstool. 



CHAPTER XXVn. 

THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN. 

Lobd Beaconsfield went down to the county which he hacl 
represented so long, and made a farewell speech at Aylesbury. 
The speech was in many parts worthy of the occasion. Un- 



CH. xxvii. THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN. 415 

fortunately Lord Beaconsfield soon went on to make a fierce 
attack on his political opponents. The controversy between 
Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Gladstone, bitter enough before, 
became still more bitter now. The policy each represented may 
be described in a few very summary words. Lord Beaconsfield 
was for maintaining Turkey at all risks as a barrier against 
Russia. Mr. Gladstone was for renouncing all responsibility 
for Turkey and taking the consequences. 

The common expectation was soon fulfilled. At the close 
of June 1876, Servia and Montenegro declared war against 
Turkey. Servia's struggle was short. At the beginning of 
September the struggle was over, and Servia was practically 
at Turkey's feet. The hardy Montenegrin mountaineers 
held their own stoutly against the Turks everywhere, but 
they could not seriously influence the fortunes of a war. Eussia 
intervened and insisted upon an armistice, and her demand 
was acceded to by Turkey. Meanwhile the general feeling in 
England on both sides was growing stronger and stronger. 
Public meetings of Mr. Gladstone's supporters were held all 
over the country, and the English Government was urged in 
the most emphatic manner to bring some strong influence to 
bear on Turkey. On the other hand, it cannot be doubted 
that the common suspicion of Eussia's designs began to grow 
more keen and wakeful than ever. Lord Derby frankly made 
known to the Emperor Alexander what was thought or feared 
in England, and the Emperor replied by pledging his sacred 
word that he had no intention of occupying Constantinople, 
and that if he were compelled by events to occupy any part of 
Bulgaria, it should be only provisionally, and until the safety 
of the Christians should be secured. Then Lord Derby pro- 
posed that a Conference of the European Powers should be 
held at Constantinople in order to agree upon some scheme 
which should provide at once for the proper government of 
the various provinces and populations subject to Turkey, and 
at the same time for the maintenance of the independence 
and integrity of the Ottoman Empire. The proposal was 
accepted by all the Great Powers, and on November 8, 1876, 
it was announced that Lord Salisbury and Sir Henry Elliott, 
the English Ambassador at Constantinople, were to attend a3 
the representatives of England. 

Lord Beaconsfield was apparently determined to recover 
the popularity that had been somewhat impaired by his un- 
lucky way of dealing with the massacres of Bulgaria. Hia 



416 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxvii. 

plan now was to go boldly in for denunciation of Eussia. 
He sometimes talked of Eussia as he might of an enemy who 
had already declared war against England. The prospects of 
a peaceful settlement of the European controversy seemed to 
become heavily overclouded. Lord Beaconsfield appeared to 
be holding the dogs of war by the collar, and only waiting for 
the convenient moment to let them slip. Everyone knew 
that some of his colleagues, Lord Derby for example, and 
Lord Carnarvon, were opposed to any thought of war, and 
felt almost as strongly for the Christian provinces of Turkey 
as Mr. Gladstone did. But people shook their heads doubtfully 
when it was asked whether Lord Derby or Lord Carnarvon, 
or both combined, could prevail in strength of will against 
Lord Beaconsfield. 

The Conference at Constantinople came to nothing. The 
Turkish statesmen at first attempted to put off the diplo- 
matists of the West by the announcement that the Sultan 
had granted a Constitution to Turkey, and that there was to 
be a Parliament at which representatives of all the provinces 
were to speak for themselves. There was in fact a Turkish 
Parliament called together. Of course the Western statesmen 
could not be put off by an announcement of this kind. They 
knew well enough what a Turkish Parliament must mean. 
It seems almost superfluous to say that the Turkish Parliament 
was ordered to disappear very soon after the occasion passed 
away for trying to deceive the Great European Powers. Evi- 
dently Turkey had got it into her head that the English Govern- 
ment would at the last moment stand by her, and would not 
permit her to be coerced. She refused to come to terms, and 
the Conference broke up without having accomplished any good. 
New attempts at arrangement were made between England, 
Eussia, and others of the Great Powers, but they fell through. 
Then at last, on April 24, 1877, Eussia declared war against 
Turkey, and on June 27 a Eussian army crossed the Danube 
and moved towards the Balkans, meeting with comparatively 
little resistance, while at the same time another Eussian force 
invaded Asia Minor. 

For a while the Eussians seemed likely to carry all before 
them. But they had made the one great mistake of altogether 
undervaluing their enemies. Their preparations were hasty 
and imperfect. The Turks turned upon them unexpectedly 
and made a gallant and almost desperate resistance. One of 
their commanders, Osman Pasha, suddenly threw up defensive 



CH. xxvii. THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN. 417 

works at Plevna, in Bulgaria, a point the Eussians had 
neglected to secure, and maintained himself there, repulsing 
the Eussians many times with great slaughter. For a while 
success seemed altogether on the side of the Turks, and many 
people in England were convinced that the Eussian enterprise 
was already an entire failure ; that nothing remained for the 
armies of the Czar but retreat, disaster, and disgrace. Under 
the directing skill, however, of General Todleben, the great 
soldier whose splendid defence of Sebastopol had made the one 
grand military reputation of the Crimean War, the fortunes of 
the campaign again turned. Kars was taken by assault on 
November 18, 1877 ; Plevna surrendered on December 10. 
At the opening of 1878 the Turks were completely prostrate. 
The road to Constantinople was clear. Before the English 
public had time to recover their breath and to observe what 
was taking place, the victorious armies of Eussia were almost 
within sight of the minarets of Stamboul. 

Meanwhile the English Government were taking momen- 
tous action. In the first days of 1878 Sir Henry Elliott, who 
had been Ambassador in Constantinople, was transferred to 
Vienna, and Mr. Layard, who had been Minister at Madrid, 
was sent to the Turkish capital to represent England there. 
Mr. Layard was known to be a strong believer in Turkey ; 
more Turkish in some respects than the Turks themselves. 
But he was a man of superabundant energy ; of what might 
be described as boisterous energy. The Ottoman Government 
could not but accept his appointment as a new and stronger 
proof that the English Government were determined to stand 
their friend ; but they ought to have accepted it too as evi- 
dence that the English. Government were determined to use 
some pressure to make them amenable to reason. Unfor- 
tunately it would appear that the Sultan's Government 
accepted Mr. Layard' s appointment in the one sense only and 
not in the other. Parliament was called together at least a 
fortnight before the time usual during recent years. The 
Speech from the Throne announced that her Majesty could 
not conceal from herself tl at should the hostilities between 
Eussia and Turkey unfortrjnately be prolonged * some unex- 
pected occurrence may render it incumbent on me to adopt 
measures of precaution.' This looked ominous to those who 
wished for peace, and it raised the spirits of the war party. 
There was a very large and a very noisy war party already 
in existence. It was particularly strong in London. It 
18* 



4i8 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxvii. 

embraced some Liberals as well as nearly all Tories. It was 
popular in the music-balls and the public-bouses of London. 
Tbe men of action got a nickname. A poet of tbe music- 
halls had composed a ballad which was sung at one of these 
caves of harmony every night amid the tumultuous applause 
of excited patriots. The refrain of this war-song contained 
the spirit-stirring words : — 

We don't want to fight, but, by Jingo, if we do, 

We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too. 

Some one whose pulses this lyrical outburst of national 
pride failed to stir called the party of its enthusiasts Jingoes. 
The name was caught up at once, and the party were uni- 
versally known as the Jingoes. The term, applied as one of 
ridicule and reproach, was adopted by chivalrous Jingoes as a 
name of pride. 

The Government ordered the Mediterranean fleet to pass 
the Dardanelles and go up to Constantinople. The Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer announced that he would ask for a 
supplementary estimate of six millions for naval and military 
purposes. Thereupon Lord Carnarvon, the Colonial Secretary, 
at once resigned. He had been anxious to get out of the 
Ministry before, but Lord Beaconsfield induced him to remain. 
He disapproved now so strongly of the despatch of the fleet 
to Constantinople and the supplementary vote, that he would 
not any longer defer his resignation. Lord Derby was also 
anxious to resign, and indeed tendered his resignation, but he 
was prevailed upon to withdraw it. The fleet meanwhile was 
ordered back from the Dardanelles to Besika Bay. It had 
got as far as the opening of the Straits when it was recalled. 
The Liberal Opposition in the House of Commons kept on 
protesting against the various war measures of the Govern- 
ment, but with little effect. "While all this agitation in and 
out of Parliament was going on, the news came that the 
Turks, utterly broken down, had been compelled to sign an 
armistice, and an agreement containing a basis of peace, at 
Adrianople. Then, following quickly on the heels of this 
announcement, came a report that the Kussians, notwith- 
standing the armistice, were pushing on towards Constanti- 
nople with the intention of occupying the Turkish capital. 
A cry of alarm and indignation broke out in London. If 
the clamour of the streets at that moment had been the voice 
of England, nothing could have prevented a declaration of 



CH. xxvii. THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN. 419 

war against Eussia. Happily, however, it was proved that 
the rumour of Eussian advance was unfounded. The fleet 
was now sent in good earnest through the Dardanelles, 
and anchored a few miles below Constantinople. Eussia at 
first protested that if the English fleet passed the Straits 
Eussian troops ought to occupy the city. Lord Derby was 
firm, and terms of arrangement were found — English troops 
were not to be disembarked and the Eussians were not to 
advance. Eussia was still open to negotiation. 

Probably Eussia had no idea of taking on herself the 
tremendous responsibility of an occupation of Constantinople. 
She had entered into a treaty with Turkey, the famous 
Treaty of San Stefano, which secured for the populations 
of the Christian provinces almost complete independence 
of Turkey, and was to create a great new Bulgarian State 
with a seaport on the Egean Sea. The English Govern- 
ment refused to recognise this treaty. Eussia offered to 
submit the treaty to the perusal, if we may use the ex- 
pression, of a Congress ; but argued that the stipulations 
which merely concerned Turkey and herself were for Turkey 
and herself to settle between them. This was obviously an 
untenable position. It is out of the question to suppose that, 
as long as European policy is conducted on its present prin- 
ciples, the Great Powers of the West could consent to allow 
Eussia to force on Turkey any terms she might think proper. 
Turkey meanwhile kept feebly moaning that she had been 
coerced into signing the treaty. The Government deter- 
mined to call in the Eeserves, to summon a contingent of 
Indian troops to Europe, to occupy Cyprus, and to make an 
armed landing on the coa*st of Syria. All these resolves were 
not, however, made known at the time. Everyone felt sure 
that something important was going on, and public expec- 
tancy was strained to the full. On March 28, 1878, Lord 
Derby announced his resignation. Measures, he said, had 
been resolved upon of which he could not approve. He did 
not give any explanation of the measures to which he ob- 
jected. Lord Beaconsfield spoke a few words of good feeling 
and good taste after Lord Derby's announcement. He had 
hoped, he said, that Lord Derby would soon come to occupy 
the place of Prime Minister which he now held ; he dwelt 
upon their long friendship. Not much was said on either 
side of what the Government were doing. The last hope of 



420 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxvu. 

the Peace Party seemed to have vanished when Lord Derby 
left his office. 

Lord Salisbury was made Foreign Minister. He was 
succeeded in the India Office by Mr. Gathorne Hardy, now 
created Lord Cranbrook. Colonel Stanley, brother of Lord 
Derby, took the office of Minister of War in Lord Cranbrook' s 
place. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach had already become Secre- 
tary for the Colonies on the resignation of Lord Carnarvon. 
The post of Irish Secretary had been given to Mr. James 
Lowther. Lord Salisbury issued a circular in which he de- 
clared that it would be impossible for England to enter a 
Congress which was not free to consider the whole of the 
provisions of the Treaty of San Stefano. The very day after 
Parliament had adjourned for the Easter recess, the Indian 
Government received orders to send certain of their troops to 
Malta. This was a complete surprise to the country. It was 
made the occasion for a very serious controversy on a grave 
constitutional question in both Houses of Parliament. The 
Opposition contended that the constitutional principle which 
left it for Parliament to fix the number of soldiers the Crown 
might maintain in England was reduced to nothingness if 
the Prime Minister could at any moment, without even con- 
sulting Parliament, draw what reinforcements he thought fit 
from the almost limitless resources of India. The majority 
then supporting Lord Beaconsfield were not, however, much 
disposed to care about argument. They were willing to ap- 
prove of any step Lord Beaconsfield might think fit to take. 

Prince Bismarck had often during these events shown an 
inclination to exhibit himself in the new attitude of a peaceful 
mediator. He now interposed again and issued invitations 
for a Congress to be held in Berlin to discuss the whole con- 
tents of the Treaty of San Stefano. After some delay, dis- 
cussion, and altercation, Bussia agreed to accept the invita- 
tion on the conditions proposed, and it was finally resolved 
that a Congress should assemble in Berlin on the approach- 
ing June 13. Much to the surprise of the public, Lord 
Beaconsfield announced that he himself would attend, ac- 
companied by Lord Salisbury, and conduct the negotiations 
in Berlin. The event was we believe without precedent. 
Never before had an English Prime Minister left the country 
whilst Parliament was sitting to act as the representative of 
England in a foreign capital. The part he had undertaken to 
play suited Lord Beaconsfield's love for the picturesque and 



CH. xxvii. THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN. 421 

the theatrical. His journey to Berlin was a sort of trium- 
phal progress. At every great city, almost at every railway 
station, as he passed, crowds turned out, drawn partly by 
curiosity, partly by admiration, to see the English statesman 
whose strange and varied career had so long excited the 
wondering attention of Europe. Prince Bismarck presided 
at the Congress, and, it is said, departed from the usual 
custom of diplomatic assemblages by opening the proceedings 
in English. The use of our language was understood to be a 
kindly and somewhat patronising deference to the English 
Prime Minister, whose knowledge of spoken French was sup- 
posed to have fallen rather into decay of late years. The 
Congress discussed the whole, or nearly the whole, of the 
questions opened up by the recent war. Greece claimed to 
be heard there, and after some delay and some difficulty was 
allowed to plead in her own cause. 

The Treaty of Berlin recognised the complete indepen- 
dence of Boumania, of Servia, and of Montenegro, subject 
only to certain stipulations with regard to religious equality 
in each of these States. To Montenegro it gave a seaport 
and a slip of territory attaching to it. Thus one great object 
of the mountaineers was accomplished. They were able to 
reach the sea. The treaty created, north of the Balkans, a 
State of Bulgaria: a much smaller Bulgaria than that 
sketched in the Treaty of San Stefano. Bulgaria was to be 
a self-governing State tributary to the Sultan and owning his 
suzerainty, but in other respects practically independent. It 
was to be governed by a Prince whom the population were to 
elect with the assent of the Great Powers and the confirmation 
of the Sultan. It was stipulated that no member of any 
reigning dynasty of the Great European Powers should be 
eligible as a candidate. South of the Balkans, the treaty 
created another and a different kind of State, under the name 
of Eastern Boumelia. That State was to remain under the 
direct political and military authority of the Sultan, but it 
was to have, as to its interior condition, a sort of ' administra- 
tive autonomy,' as the favourite diplomatic phrase then 
was. East Boumelia was to be ruled by a Christian Governor, 
and there was a stipulation that the Sultan should not 
employ any irregular troops, such as the Circassians and the 
Bashi-Bazouks, in the garrisons of the frontier. The Euro- 
pean Powers were to arrange in concert with the Porte for 
the organisation of this new State. As regarded Greece, it 



422 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxvil. 

was arranged that the Sultan and the King of the Hellenes 
were to come to some understanding for a modification of the 
Greek frontier, and that if they could not arrange this between 
themselves, the Great Powers were to have the right of offer- 
ing, that is to say in plain words of insisting on, their media- 
tion. Bosnia and the Herzegovina were to be occupied and 
administered by Austria. Eoumania undertook, or in other 
words was compelled to undertake, to return to Eussia that 
portion of Bessarabian territory which had been detached from 
Eussia by the Treaty of Paris. Eoumania was to receive in 
compensation some islands forming the Delta of the Danube, 
and a portion of the Dobrudscha. As regarded Asia, the 
Porte was to cede to Eussia, Ardahan, Ears, and Batoum, 
with its grsat port on the Black Sea. 

The Treaty of Berlin gave rise to keen and adverse criti- 
cism. Very bitter indeed was the controversy provoked by 
the surrender to Eussia of the Bessarabian territory taken 
from her at the time of the Crimean War. Eussia had re- 
gained everything which she had been compelled to sacrifice 
at the close of the Crimean War. The Black Sea was open 
to her war vessels, and its shores to her arsenals. The last 
slight trace of Crimean humiliation was effaced in the restora- 
tion of the territory of Bessarabia. Profound disappointment 
was caused among many European populations, as well as 
among the Greeks themselves, by the arrangements for the 
rectification of the Greek frontier. Thus, speaking roughly, 
it may be said that the effect of the Congress of Berlin on the 
mind of Europe was to make the Christian populations of the 
south-east believe that their friend was Eussia and their 
enemies were England and Turkey ; to make the Greeks 
believe that France was their especial friend, and that Eng- 
land was their enemy ; and to create an uncomfortable im- 
pression everywhere that the whole Congress was a pre- 
arranged business, a transaction with a foregone conclusion, 
a dramatic performance carefully rehearsed before in all its 
details and merely enacted as a pageant on the Berlin 
stage. 

The latter impression was converted into a conviction by 
certain subsequent revelations. It came out that Lord 
Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury had been entering into 
secret engagements both with Eussia and with Turkey. The 
secret engagement with Eussia was prematurely divulged by 
the heedlessness or the treachery of a person who had been 



CH. xxvii. THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN. 423 

called in at a small temporary rate of pay to assist in copying 
despatches in the Foreign Office. It bound England to put 
up with the handing back of Bessarabia and the cession of the 
port of Batoum. It conceded all the points in advance which 
the English people believed that their plenipotentiaries had 
been making brave struggle for at Berlin. Lord Beaconsfield 
had not then frightened Eussia into accepting the Congress 
on his terms. The call of the Indian troops to Malta had not 
done the business ; nor the reserves, nor the vote of the six 
millions. Eussia had gone into the Congress because Lord 
Salisbury had made a secret engagement with her that she 
should have what she specially wanted. The Congress was 
only a piece of pompous and empty ceremonial. By another 
secret engagement entered into with Turkey, the English 
Government undertook to guarantee to Turkey her Asiatic 
possessions against all invasion on condition that Turkey 
handed over to England the island of Cyprus for her occupa- 
tion. The difference, therefore, between the policy of the 
Conservative Government and the policy of the Liberals was 
now thrown into the strongest possible relief. Mr. Glad- 
stone, and those who thought with him, had always made it 
a principle of their policy that England had no special and 
separate interest in maintaining the independence of Turkey. 
Lord Beaconsfield now declared it to be the cardinal principle 
of his policy that England specially, England above all, was 
concerned to maintain the integrity and the independence of 
the Turkish Empire ; that in fact the security of Turkey was 
as much part of the duty of English statesmanship as the 
security of the Channel Islands or of Malta. 

For the moment the policy of Lord Beaconsfield seemed 
to be entirely in the ascendant. His return home was cele- 
brated with great pomp and circumstance. He made a con- 
quering hero's progress through the streets of London. Arrived 
at the Foreign Office, he addressed from the windows an 
excited and tumultuous crowd, and he proclaimed, in words 
which became memorable, that he had brought back * Peace 
with Honour.' At this moment he was probably the most 
conspicuous public man in the world, unless we make one 
single exception in favour of Prince Bismarck. He had 
attained to a position of almost unrivalled popularity in Eng- 
land. He ought to have followed classic advice and sacrificed 
at that moment his dearest possession to the gods. No man 
without sacrifice could buy the lease of such a position and 



424 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN' TIMES, ch. xxvil. 

the endurance of such a success. Meanwhile, so far as could 
be judged by external symptoms, and in the metropolis, Mr. 
Gladstone and his followers were down to their lowest depth, 
their very zero of unpopularity. The majority of the London 
newspapers were entirely on the side of Lord Beaconsfield. 
In the provinces, on the whole, Liberalism still remained 
popular. Mr. Gladstone would still have been sure of the 
cheers of a great provincial meeting. But there came a day 
in London when, passing with his wife through one of the 
streets, he was compelled to seek the shelter of a friendly 
hall-door in order to escape from the threatening demon- 
strations of a little mob of patriots boisterously returning 
from a Jingo carnival. 

During the excitement caused by the preparations for the 
Congress of Berlin a long career came quietly to a close. On 
May 28, 1878, Lord Eussell died at his residence, Pembroke 
Lodge, Bichmond. He may be said to have faded out of life, 
to have ceased to live, rather than to have died, so quiet, 
gradual, almost imperceptible was the passing away. He had 
not for some time taken any active part in public affairs. Now 
and then some public event aroused his attention, and he 
addressed a letter to one of the newspapers. To the last 
moments of his life Lord Eussell refused to surrender wholly 
his concern in the affairs of men. The world listened respect- 
fully to these few occasional words from one who had borne a 
leader's part in some of the greatest political struggles of the 
century, and who still from the very edge of the grave was 
anxious to offer his whisper of counsel or of warning. His had 
been on the whole a great career. He had not only lived 
through great changes, he had helped to accomplish some of 
the greatest changes his time had known. His life was sin- 
gularly unselfish. He was often eager and pushing where he 
believed that he saw his way to do something needful, and 
men confounded the zeal of a cause with the eagerness of per- 
sonal ambition. He never cared for money, and his original 
rank raised him above any possible consideration for enhanced 
social distinction. He had made many mistakes ; but those 
who knew him best prized most highly both his political 
capacity and his personal character. His later years were 
made happy and smooth by all that the love of a household 
could do. He had lost a son, a young man of much political 
promise, Lord Amberley, who died in 1876 ; but on the whole 
he had suffered less in his later time than is commonly the lot 



CH. xxvil. THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN. 425 

ol ihose who live to extreme old age. The time of his death 
was in a certain sense appropriate. His public career had 
just begun at the time of the Congress of Vienna ; it closed 
with the preparations for the Congress of Berlin. 

Why did not Lord Beaconsfield sacrifice to the gods his 
dearest possession, his political majority, immediately after 
the triumphal return from Berlin ? The opinion of nearly all 
who pretended to form a judgment was, that at that time the 
great majority of the constituencies were with him. It is said 
that he was strongly advised by some of his northern sup- 
porters not to put the country then to the cost of a general 
election. Whatever the reason may have been, the expected 
dissolution did not take place, and from that time Lord 
Beaconsfield never had any chance of a successful appeal to 
the country. From that time the popularity of his Govern- 
ment began to go down and down. Trade was depressed. 
The badness of trade and the general depression were no fault 
of the Administration, but the Government aggravated every 
evil of this kind by the strain on which they kept the expec- 
tation of the country. Their domestic policy had not been, 
successful. They had attempted many large measures and 
failed to carry them through. They had not satisfied the 
country party, to whom they owed so much. The malt tax 
remained a grievance, as it had been for generations. The 
Government had got into trouble with the Home Bule party. 
Mr. Parnell, a young man but lately come into Parliament, 
soon proved himself the most remarkable politician who had 
arisen on the field of Irish politics since the day when John 
Mitchel was conveyed away from Dublin to Bermuda. The 
tactics adopted by Mr. Parnell annoyed and discredited the 
Government. The country blamed the Ministry, it scarcely 
knew why, for the manner in which the policy called obstruc- 
tive had been allowed to come into force. It was evident 
that a new chapter in Irish agitation was opening, and those 
who disliked the prospect felt inclined to lay the blame on 
the Government, as if, because they happened to be in office, 
they must be responsible for everything that took place during 
their official reign. Most of all, the Ministry suffered from 
the effect produced upon the country by the smaller wars into 
which they plunged. 

The first of these was the invasion of Afghanistan. The 
Government determined to send a mission to Shere Ali, one 
of the sons of Dost Mohammed, and then the ruler of Cabul, 



426 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxvu. 

in order to guard against Eussian intrigue by establishing a 
distinct and paramount influence in Afghanistan. Shere 
Ali strongly objected to receive either a mission or a perma- 
nent Eesident. The mission was sent forward. It was so 
numerous as to look rather like an army than an embassy. 
It started from Peshawur on September 21, 1878, but was 
stopped on the frontier by an officer of Shere Ali, who ob- 
jected to its passing through until he had received authority 
from his master. This delay was magnified, by the news 
first received here, into an insolent rebuff. The Envoy was 
ordered to go on, and before long the mission was turned into 
an invasion. The Afghans made but a poor resistance, and 
the English troops soon occupied Cabul. Shere Ali fled from 
his capital. One portion of our forces occupied Candahar. 
Shere Ali died, and Yakoob Khan, his son, became his suc- 
cessor. Yakoob Khan presented himself at the British camp 
which had now been established at Gandamak, a place between 
Jellalabad and Cabul. Here the Treaty of Gandamak was 
signed on May 5, 1879. The Indian Government under- 
took by this treaty to pay the Ameer 60,000Z. a year, and the 
Ameer ceded, or appeared to cede, what Lord Beaconsfield 
called the ' scientific frontier,' and agreed to admit a British 
representative to reside in Cabul. On those conditions he 
was to be supported against any foreign enemy with money 
and arms, and, if necessary, with men. Hardly had the 
country ceased clapping its hands and exulting over the quiet 
establishment of an English Eesident at Cabul when a tele- 
gram arrived announcing that the events of November 1841 
had repeated themselves in that city. The tragedy of Sir 
Alexander Burnes was enacted over again. A popular rising 
took place in Cabul exactly as had happened in 1841. Sir 
Louis Cavagnari, the English Envoy, and all or nearly all 
the members of his staff, were murdered. There was nothing 
to be done for it but invade Cabul over again, and take ven- 
geance for the massacre of the English officers. The British 
troops hurried up, fought their way with their usual success, 
and on the Christmas Eve of 1879 Cabul was again entered. 
Yakoob Khan, accused of complicity in the massacre, was sent 
as a prisoner to India. Cabul was occupied, but not possessed. 
The English Government held in their power just as much 
of Afghanistan as they could cover with their encampments. 
They held it for just so long as they kept the encampments 
standing. The Treaty of Gandamak was of course nothing 
but waste paper. 



CH. xxvii. THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN. 427 

The wai in South Africa was, if possible, less justifiable. 
It was also, if possible, more disastrous. The region which 
we call South Africa consisted of several States, native and 
European, under various forms of authority. Cape Colony 
and Natal were for a long time the only English dominions. 
The Orange Free State and the Transvaal Bepublic were 
Dutch settlements. In 1848, the British Government had 
established its authority over the Orange Eiver territory, but 
it afterwards transferred its powers to a provisional Government 
of Dutch origin. The Transvaal was a Dutch Bepublic with 
which we had until quite lately no direct connection. In 
1852, the English Government resolved that its operations 
and its responsibilities in South Africa should be limited to 
Cape Colony and Natal, and distinctly recognised the inde- 
pendence of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Bepublic. 
Besides these States of what we may call European origin, 
there were a great many native communities, some which had 
enough of organisation to be almost regarded as States. The 
Kaffirs had often given us trouble before. The most powerful 
tribe in South Africa was that of the Zulus. Natal was divided 
from Zulu territory only by the Biver Tugela. The ruler of 
the Zulu tribe, Cetewayo, was much inclined to a cordial alliance 
with the English, and although he did not owe his power in 
any direct sense to us, yet he went through a form, in which 
our representatives bore their part, of accepting his crown at 
the hands of the English Sovereign. He was often involved 
in disputes with the Boers, or Dutch-descended occupants of 
the Transvaal Bepublic. Other native tribes were still more 
directly and often engaged in quarrels with the Boers. The 
Transvaal Bepublic made war upon one of the greatest 
of these African chiefs, Secocoeni, and had the worst of it in 
the struggle. The Bepublic was badly managed in every way. 
Its military operations were a total failure ; its exchequer was 
ruined ; there seemed hardly any chance of maintaining order 
within its frontier, and the prospect appeared at the time to 
be that its South African enemies would overrun the whole 
of the Bepublic, would thus come up to the borders of the 
English States, and possibly might soon involve the English 
settlers themselves in war. Under these conditions a certain 
number of disappointed or alarmed inhabitants of the Trans- 
vaal made some kind of indirect proposition to England that 
the Bepublic should be annexed to English territory. Sir 
Theophilus Shepstone was sent out by England to ascertain 



428 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxvn. 

whether this offer was genuine and national. He seems to 
have been entirely mistaken in his appreciation of the con- 
dition of things, and he boldly declared the Bepublic a portion 
of the dominions of Great Britain. Meanwhile there had 
been a controversy going on for a long time between Cetewayo 
and the Transvaal Bepublic about a certain disputed strip of 
land. The dispute was referred to the arbitration of Eng- 
land, with whom Cetewayo was then on the most friendly 
terms. Four English arbitrators decided that the disputed 
strip of territory properly belonged to the Zulu nation. 

Meanwhile, Sir Bartle Frere was sent out as Lord High 
Commissioner. From the moment of his appearance on the 
scene the whole state of affairs seems to have undergone a 
complete change. Sir Bartle Frere kept back the award of 
the arbitrators for several months, unwilling to hand over 
any new territory unconditionally to Cetewayo, whom he 
regarded as a dangerous enemy and an unscrupulous despot. 
During this time a hostile feeling was growing up in the mind 
of Cetewayo. He appears to have really become mastered by 
the conviction that the English were determined to find a 
pretext for making war on him, for annexing his territory, 
and for sending him to prison, as had been done to another 
South African chief, Langalibalele, in 1874. Sir Bartle Frere 
was a man who had many times rendered great service to Eng- 
land. He had been Chief Commissioner in Scinde from 1852 
to 1859, and had shown great ability and energy during the 
Indian Mutiny. Since that he had been one of the Council 
of the Viceroy of India ; he had been for some years Governor 
of Bombay, and he had been appointed to the Council of the 
Secretary of State here at home. He had been sent upon an 
important mission to the Sultan of Zanzibar in 1872, the 
object of which was to endeavour to obtain the suppression of 
the slave trade, and he succeeded. Sir Bartle Frere seems 
to have been really filled with that imperial instinct about 
which other men only talked. His was a strong nature with 
an imperious will and an inexhaustible energy. He was un- 
doubtedly conscientious and high-principled according to his 
lights. He appears to have been influenced by two strong 
ambitions : to spread the Gospel and to extend the territory 
of England. In Africa his mind appears to have become at 
once possessed with the conviction that alike for the safety of 
the whites and the improvement of the coloured races it would 
be necessary to extend the government of England over the 



£H. xxvii. THE CONGRESS OF BERLW. 429 

whole southern portion of that continent, and to efface the 
boundaries of native tribes by blending them all into one 
imperial confederation. 

Cetewayo's position made him a rival to Sir Bartle Frere's 
policy, and Sir Bartle Frere appears to have made up his 
mind that these two stars were not to keep their motion in 
one sphere, and that South Africa was not to brook the double 
rule of the English Commissioner and the Zulu king. Sir 
Bartle Frere kept the award of the four English arbitrators in 
his hands for some months without taking any action upon 
it, and when he did at length announce it to Cetewayo, he 
accompanied it with an ultimatum declaring that the Zulu 
army must at once be disbanded and must return to their 
homes. This was in point of fact a declaration of war. The 
English troops immediately invaded Zulu country, and almost 
the first news that reached England of the progress of the 
war was the story of the complete and terrible defeat of an 
English force on January 22, 1879. Not within the memory 
of any living man had so sudden and sweeping a disaster fallen 
upon English arms. Englishmen were wholly unused to the 
very idea of English troops being defeated in the field. The 
story that an English force had been surprised and out- 
generaled, out-fought, completely defeated by half-naked 
savages, came on the country with a shock never felt since at 
least the time of the disasters of Cabul and the Jugdulluk 
Pass. Of course the disaster was retrieved. Lord Chelms- 
ford, the Commander-in-Chief (son of the Lord Chelmsford 
just dead, who had been twice Lord Chancellor), only wanted 
time, in homely language, to pull himself together in order to 
recover his position. The war soon came to the end which 
everyone must have expected, first the defeat of the Zulu king 
and then his capture. Cetewayo's territory was divided 
amongst the leading native chiefs. A portion of it was given 
to an Englishman, John Dunn, who had settled in the coun- 
try very young, and who had become a sort of potentate 
among the Zulus. 

One melancholy incident made the war memorable not 
only to England but to Europe. The young French Prince 
Louis Napoleon, who had studied in English military schools, 
had attached himself as a volunteer to Lord Chelmsford's 
staff. During one of the episodes of the war he and some of 
his companions were surprised by a body of Zulus. Others 
escaped, but Prince Louis Napoleon was killed. 



430 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxvn. 

The war, although it had ended in a practical success, was 
none the less regarded by the English public as a blunder and 
a disaster. Even the Afghan enterprise, objectionable though 
it was in almost every way, did not affect the popularity of 
the Government so much as the Zulu war. The plain com- 
mon sense of England held that Sir Bartle Frere, however 
high and conscientious his motives may have been, was in the 
wrong from first to last, and that the cause of Cetewayo was 
on the whole a cause of fairness and of justice. On the 
Government fell the burden of Sir Bartle Frere's responsi- 
bilities, without Sir Bartle Frere's consoling and self-sufficing 
belief in the justice of his cause and the genuineness of his 
enterprise. 

The distress in the country was growing deeper and deeper 
day by day. Some of the most important trades were suffering 
heavily. The winter of 1878 had been long and bitter, and 
there had been practically no summer. The manufacturing 
and mining districts almost everywhere over the country were 
borne down by the failure of business. The working classes 
were in genuine distress. In Ireland there was a forecast of 
something almost approaching to famine. When distress 
affects the trade and the population of a country, the first 
impulse is always to find fault with the reigning Government. 
The authority of the Government in the House of Com- 
mons was greatly shaken. Sir Stafford Northcote had not 
the strength necessary to make a successful leader. The 
result was that the House was becoming demoralised. The 
Government brought in a scheme for university education 
in Ireland, which was nothing better than a mutilation of 
Mr. Gladstone's rejected bill. It was carried through both 
Houses in a few weeks, because the Government were anxious 
to do something which might have the appearance of con- 
ciliating the Irish people without going far enough in that 
direction to estrange their Conservative supporters. The 
measure thus devised had exactly the opposite effect from 
that which was intended. It estranged a good many Conser- 
vative supporters ; it roused a new feeling of hostility amongst 
the Nonconformists, and it did not concede enough to the 
demands of the Irish Catholics to be of any use in the way of 
conciliation. It was plain that the mandate, to use a French 
phrase, of the Parliament was nearly out. The session of 
1879 was its sixth session ; it would only be possible to have 
one session more. Louder and louder grew the cry from the 



CH. xxvir. THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN. 431 

Liberal side for the Government at once to go to the country. 
Thus the winter passed on. Two or three elections which 
occurred meantime resulted in favour of the Conservatives. 
There was a little renewal of confidence among the friends of 
Lord Beaconsfield, and a sudden sinking of the spirits among 
most of the Liberals. Parliament met in February, and the 
Government gave it to be understood that they intended to 
have what one of them called ' a fair working session.' Sud- 
denly, however, they made up their minds that it would be 
convenient to accept Mr. Gladstone's challenge, and to dis- 
solve in the Easter holidays. The dissolution took place on 
March 24, 1880, and the elections began. 

With the very first day of the elections it was evident that 
the Conservative majority was already gone. Each succeeding 
day showed more and more the change that had taken place 
in public feeling. Defeat was turned into disaster. Disaster 
became utter rout and confusion. When the elections were 
over it was found that the Conservative party were nowhere. 
A majority of some hundred and twenty sent the Liberals 
back into power. No Liberal statesmen in our time ever 
before saw themselves sustained by such an army of followers. 
There was a moment or two of hesitation — of delay. The 
Queen sent for Lord Hartington, she then sent for Lord 
Granville ; but everyone knew in advance who was to come 
into office at last. The strife lately carried on had been the 
old duel between two great men. Mr. Gladstone had stood 
up against Lord Beaconsfield for some years and fought him 
alone. He had dragged his party after him into many a 
danger. He had compelled them more than once to fight 
when many of them would fain have held back, and where 
none of them saw any chance of victory. Now, at last, the 
battle had been given to his hands, and it was a matter of 
necessity that the triumph should bring back to power the 
man whose energy and eloquence had inspired the struggle. 
The Queen sent for Mr. Gladstone, and a new chapter of 
English history opened. 



432 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxviii. 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

mr. Gladstone's administration. 

Mr. Gladstone's Administration included among its mem- 
bers the Duke of Argyll, Lord Granville, Lord Hartington, 
John Bright, Sir William Harcourt, Sir Charles Dilke, and 
Joseph Chamberlain. Lord Ripon was made Viceroy of 
India; Mr. W. E. Forster, Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieu- 
tenant of Ireland, with a seat in the Cabinet. The first 
difficulty with which the Gladstone Administration had to 
deal was that caused by the election of Mr. Charles Bradlaugh 
as one of the members for Northampton. Mr. Bradlaugh was 
a man of great ability, a powerful speaker and advanced 
political reformer. He held extreme and, indeed, atheistical 
views. He was not merely an agnostic — that is, one who 
does not believe it is possible to know anything of the super- 
natural — but had made up his mind that there is no God, 
and that there is no world for man beyond the grave. There 
is no Parliamentary rule proclaiming that an atheist cannot 
have a seat in the House of Commons or calling for any pre- 
liminary inquiry into the religion of each new member, but 
there is a rule which requires that each new member shall 
swear that he will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the 
Sovereign, 'so help me God.' The new Parliament was open- 
ed by commission on April 29, 1880, and on the third day of 
the session Mr. Bradlaugh presented himself at the Bar of 
the House and claimed permission to make a solemn affirma- 
tion instead of taking the oath, and Lord Frederick Cavendish 
moved the appointment of a Select Committee to consider the 
question. A fierce discussion ensued, in which the opponents 
of the Liberal Government, and especially the members of that 
which was then known as the Fourth Party, Lord Randolph 
Churchill, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, Mr. Gorst, and Mr. 
Arthur Balfour, took a leading part. The Committee was 
appointed by a large majority, and after some consideration 
it reported against Mr. Bradlaugh's claim to be admitted on a 
mere affirmation. The report of the Committee was, however, 
only carried by the casting vote of its chairman. Mr. Brad- 
laugh then made it known that, if he could not otherwise be 
allowed to enter the House and do the work of his constitu- 
ents, he was ready to take the oath, and that he would regard 



CH. xxviil. MR. GLADSTONE'S ADMINISTRATION. 433 

it as binding on him, although he could not himself attach 
any meaning to the concluding words of the declaration. He 
came up to the table of the House and offered to take the 
oath, but Sir Henry Wolff interposed on the ground that Mr. 
Bradlaugh, having proclaimed himself an atheist, was not en- 
titled to take the oath. It is not necessary to go into any 
detailed account of the long struggle which succeeded. Some 
scenes of wild disorder occurred. Bradlaugh rushed up the 
floor of the House and caught the Testament lying on the 
table in front of the Speaker's chair in order to be sworn in, 
or to swear himself in, but the officers of the House seized 
him and endeavoured to drag him back. He rushed up again 
and again, and was again and again dragged back. He was 
excluded from the House by authority, and was declared in- 
capable of sitting and voting there; but he immediately 
sought re-election from his constituents, was promptly re- 
elected, and again presented himself in the House. A fierce 
struggle took place between him and ten policemen — he was 
a man of great size and strength — and he was at last thrust 
out of the House and dragged down some flights of winding 
stairs leading to Palace Yard. No such scenes had been 
seen in that House of Commons during the reign of Queen 
Victoria. 

In the end Mr. Bradlaugh carried his point. In 1886, hav- 
ing been again elected, and a new Parliament being then 
sitting, he presented himself once again, and the country and 
the House of Commons being probably by that time weary of 
the whole discussion, the new Speaker, Mr. Arthur Peel, gave 
it as his judgment that neither the Speaker nor anyone else 
had a right to prevent a member from taking the oath which 
he had declared himself ready to take. Not long after, the 
whole controversy was brought to an end by the passing of 
an Act which allowed any member to affirm, if he preferred 
affirmation to the taking of an oath. Mr. Bradlaugh proved 
a useful member of the House of Commons, and made many 
friends there, and when finally a motion was brought forward 
on his behalf for the erasing from the journals of the old reso- 
lutions which had been carried to exclude him, the motion 
was carried without serious opposition from any part of the 
House — was carried without a division. Bradlaugh, whose 
health had for some time been breaking down, died before he 
had the opportunity of reading the account of his final victory. 
He passed out of life on the morning of January 30, 1891. 

We have anticipated the progress of events in order to tell 
the full story of the remarkable historical episode contained 



434 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxvm. 

in the Bradlaugh controversy. The Government of Mr. 
Gladstone had succeeded to heavy responsibilities in foreign, 
Colonial, and domestic affairs. Some trouble was already 
arising, trouble destined to come up again and again for a 
long time, with regard to the population of the Transvaal 
Republic in South Africa. The Boers, as the European oc- 
cupiers and masters of that territory were called, were all, or 
nearly all, of Dutch descent, and many of them of Dutch 
birth, but^ they regarded themselves as a self-created state, 
and had, in fact, made up a sort of language of their own. 
Some English statesmen, belonging to the Government which 
held office before Mr. Gladstone returned to power, had be- 
come filled with the idea that a scheme of South African fed- 
eration could be formed under English rule in which the Boer 
Republic could take a part. The idea of these statesmen was 
that England should rule the whole of South Africa, and that 
the attempt of the Boers to set up an independent state of 
their own was already an offence against the jurisdiction of 
the British Sovereign. The main body of the Dutch popu- 
lation were, however, absolutely opposed to the domination 
of England over the Transvaal, and they sent several depu- 
tations to England to appeal against the proposed policy of 
annexation. The cause of the Boers found some sympathisers 
in England, and among these was Mr. Gladstone, who de- 
nounced in public the policy which had led to the annexation 
of the Transvaal. In one of Mr. Gladstone's speeches on this 
subject he described the Transvaal as 'a country where we 
have chosen, most unwisely — I am tempted to say, insanely 
— to place ourselves in the strange predicament of the free 
subjects of a monarchy going to coerce the free subjects of a 
republic, and to compel them to accept a citizenship which 
they decline and refuse/ He described the Boers of the 
Transvaal as 'a people vigorous, obstinate, and tenacious in 
character, even as we are ourselves.' The Boers very soon 
gave ample evidence that Mr. Gladstone was thoroughly jus- 
tified in his estimate of their resolve. They took up arms 
against the effort to convert their land into a subject terri- 
tory of the British Empire. Once again the Transvaal was 
proclaimed a Republic, with Stephen John Paul Kruger at 
its head. War broke out. The Boers knew their mountains 
and passes well, they were all splendid marksmen, and though 
the British soldiers fought gallantly, and their officers never 
lost their heads, yet it soon became certain that the campaign 
must quickly come to an end. Sir George Colley, the English 
Commander-in-Chief, was killed by a rifle ball at the battle of 



CH. xxviii. MR. GLADSTONE'S ADMINISTRATION. 435 

Majuba Hill; there were not English troops enough in South 
Africa to hold the field, and the Transvaal was independent 
once again. Peace was made after long delays, and on Feb- 
ruary 27, 1884, a new convention was signed at the Colonial 
Office on the part of Queen Victoria's government and of the 
delegates of that which was to be known in future as the South 
African Republic. This convention gave to the Boers what 
was in substance complete domestic independence, with cer- 
tain conditions forbidding the introduction of slavery into the 
Republic, insisting on religious liberty being allowed to all 
residents there, and reserving to England a right of veto over 
the conclusion of any treaties which the Republic might de- 
sire to enter into with any foreign power. There was for a 
time a great outcry, and many English Liberals, as well as 
Tories, insisted that the defeat of the English on Majuba Hill 
ought to have been effaced in blood before England consented 
to let the Transvaal go. But Mr. Gladstone could not see 
that the attempt to crush out the independence of a foreign 
state was so sacrosanct as to justify any policy, however 
extreme, which might be needed to carry it to complete suc- 
cess. He believed that the policy was wrong in the beginning, 
and was not to be made right merely by the fact that those 
against whom it was directed had courage and resolve enough 
to meet it with a gallant resistance. England had resources 
enough to extirpate the military defenders, and, indeed, the 
whole Boer population of the Transvaal if she had thought fit ; 
but Mr. Gladstone was not a statesman who could be brought 
to believe that the true heart and mind of England would 
sanction such a course of action. So peace was made, and 
the clamour against it soon began to lose its force. 

Some troubles in Afghanistan were a part of Mr. Glad- 
stone's inheritance. These troubles came from the Oriental 
policy of the Conservative Government, which had brought 
about the occupation of Cabul by English forces, and the 
maintenance of a sovereign, Yakoub Khan whom England 
had agreed to maintain against all enemies. The Afghan 
troubles of those days have been already described, and their 
breaking out again was simply caused by another struggle 
between rival claimants for the sovereignty in which the Eng- 
lish Government had espoused the cause of one claimant. The 
British troops suffered several reverses, partly owing to the 
fact that the strength of the claimant whom they opposed 
had been greatly underrated, and partly because a large pro- 
portion of the British troops were made up of Indian sepoys 
who had little or no experience in the art of war. The posi- 



436 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxvm. 

tion was, however, retrieved by Sir Frederick Roberts, after- 
wards Lord Roberts, who was sent out with some 10,000 men, 
of whom a large number were Asiatics, and who accomplished 
one of the most famous military movements known to modern 
history. 

At home the Government of Mr. Gladstone became threat- 
ened with a difficulty greater than any which could, just 
then, have come from abroad, caused by the condition of Ire- 
land Ireland had for a long time been ruled under what was 
known as the Peace Preservation Act: an Act chiefly for the 
repression and prevention of movements against the sovereign 
powers of the landlords, and of movements for securing to the 
Irish tenant some right of property in the land he cultivated. 
Mr. Gladst ne was anxious to bring about some enduring im- 
provement in the state of things, and did not believe that any 
improvement could be accomplished merely by measures of 
coercion. The Queen's Speech, read at the opening of Parlia- 
ment, announced the intention of the Government to aban- 
don the Peace Preservation Act, and to govern Ireland under 
the ordinary law. The Conservative Opposition in the House 
of Lords objected to this proposal; while in the House of 
Commons an amendment to the Address, in reply to the Royal 
Speech, was moved on behalf of the Irish Nationalist party, 
complaining that no allusion to the Irish land question had 
been made in the Royal Speech, and declaring that the sub- 
ject demanded the immediate and most serious attention of 
the Government. Mr. Gladstone had already acknowledged 
more than once that the Irish land tenure system was entirely 
unsatisfactory, and, indeed, it had been condemned by en- 
lightened and impartial authorities within and without the 
realms of political life. He had acknowledged this practical- 
ly by an Act passed in 1870, which went a certain way tow- 
ards the recognition of the Irish tenant's right to some owner- 
ship of land which he had by his own industry and labour made 
productive and prosperous, and the right of the tenant not to 
be evicted from that land without receiving from the land- 
lord a reasonable compensation for any improvements he had 
made. That principle established by the Act of 1870 was 
sound and beneficent, but the provisions of the Act in general 
fell short of accomplishing all that was needed to bring pros- 
perity within the reach of the Irish tenantry. 

Such was the position in which Mr. Gladstone found him- 
self at the opening of the session of 1880. Since the passing 
of the Act of 1870 there had been no real improvement in the 
condition of the Irish tenantry, while there had been in the 



CH. xxviii. MR. GLADSTONE'S ADMINISTRATION. 437 

winter of 1879, and the early months of 1880, a great failure 
of the crops in Ireland, and very widespread and keen distress. 
The coming of Mr. Gladstone into power had been hailed with 
hope, even with enthusiasm, by the large majority of the 
Irish people, and the appointment of Mr. Forster as Chief 
Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland had been cordial- 
ly welcomed among the Irish, because of the personal services 
he and his father had rendered to Ireland during the famine 
of 1846 and 1847, services still remembered by Irishmen 
everywhere. The Irish Nationalist party now prepared a 
measure to legalise compensation for disturbance, to enact 
that, if an Irish landlord should evict a tenant, the landlord 
should be bound to allow him compensation for any improve- 
ments accomplished by his own work and his own money. 
Mr. Gladstone yielded to the demand so far as to authorise 
the introduction by the Government of a Bill embodying the 
principle of compensation for disturbance. This measure was 
fiercely opposed by the Conservatives, and was regarded as 
inadequate to its purpose by many of the Irish members, but 
it was carried through the House on July 26, 1880, was then 
sent up to the House of Lords, and after a debate of two 
nights was rejected there by an overwhelming majority. In 
the meantime a great change had been taking place in the 
position and the strength of the Irish National Parliamentary 
party. The Irish party had got a new leader, and had been 
inspired by him with an entirely new plan of action. The 
new leader was Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell, whose name soon 
became famous not only in Great Britain but throughout the 
civilised world. His was the most powerful Parliamentary 
figure that had risen in Irish history since the death of Daniel 
O'Connell. Parnell was not Irish on either side of his house. 
On his father's side he came of an old English family who had 
moved, at a comparatively recent period, from Congleton, in 
Cheshire, and set up their home in the county of Wicklow. One 
of the family was Thomas Parnell, at one time celebrated as 
the author of " The Hermit." Parnell 's mother was an Ameri- 
can, a daughter of Admiral Charles Stewart, a distinguished 
American naval officer who fought against the English in the 
war of 1812. Parnell was sent to various private schools in 
England, and afterwards to Magdalene College, Cambridge. 
While he was at Cambridge the Fenian movement began in 
Ireland, and ParnelPs mother was then in the ancestral house 
at Avondale, in Wicklow. She was supposed by the author- 
ities to have sympathy with the movement, and to have shel- 
tered Fenians in the house. Avondale was searched by the 



438 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxvui. 

police, and even Mrs. ParnelPs bedroom was not sacred from 
the investigation. When young Parnell heard of the indig- 
nity offered to his mother, he became filled with a passion of 
hatred for English government in Ireland. That is believed 
to have been the first time that he thought about an Irish 
National movement, and from that moment he became an 
inveterate enemy of English rule in Ireland. Parnell never 
was in favour of armed rebellion, nor did he set his heart on 
accomplishing a separation from England. His dream for 
Ireland was of a national Parliament in Dublin on terms of a 
willing partnership with Great Britain. He gradually worked 
out in his mind the idea of forming a new Irish National party 
which would compel the House of Commons to pay attention 
to the cause and the claims of Ireland, and his idea was that 
until the House of Commons would make up its mind to give 
the Irish party a full and fair hearing, it should not be allowed 
to follow out any other business. He had a strong conviction 
that if the attention of the English public outside Parliament 
could once be fully drawn to the Irish cause, that public 
would, before long, recognise the justice of Ireland's claims, 
and would compel Parliament to treat those claims with prop- 
er attention. Obstruction had been tried again and again 
in the House of Commons, but it had only been employed for 
the purpose of preventing or delaying the passage of some 
particular measure; ParnelFs was the first deliberate and 
systematic plan to force the House to the alternative of choos- 
ing whether it would give full consideration to Ireland's de- 
mand or have to put up with an indefinite interruption to the 
progress of any other work. 

When the House of Lords rejected the Compensation for 
Disturbance Bill, the Government was strongly urged by the 
Irish Nationalist members, and by some English democratic 
members, to send the measure up again to the hereditary 
chamber with the object of forcing the Peers to give way. 
But Mr. Forster, on behalf of the Government, did not see his 
way to take such a decided step. The evictions in Ireland 
went on as before, and the winter proved very severe. There 
were alarming evidences of another famine in Ireland, and 
there were many disturbances and outrages, the natural re- 
sults of despair. Constitutional agitation for the time seem- 
ed barren and hopeless, and a dreary and ghastly period en- 
sued. Mr. Forster became utterly unpopular in Ireland, and 
all the more because of the faith which had once been given 
to him by the Irish people, and the disappointment which had 
succeeded to that faith. Mr. Forster himself seemed to feel 



CH. xxviii. MR. GLADSTONE'S ADMINISTRATION, 439 

bitterly the change of popular feeling manifested towards him, 
while he did not take into due account the very obvious rea- 
sons for that change. 

Mr. Forster now went in resolutely for a stand-up fight 
against the Irish people. He carried measures through the 
House of Commons, not without fierce and prolonged resist- 
ance from the Irish members, which enabled him to imprison 
at will anyone against whom there was 'reasonable suspi- 
cion' of an inclination to disturb the country. The men thus 
imprisoned were not charged with any definite offence, were 
not to be brought to any trial. They were simply to be locked 
up for the supposed safety of the community until quieter 
times. Mr. Forster carried his measures after long nights of 
obstruction, commotion, and disorder in the House of Com- 
mons, and the suspension of many Irish Nationalist members. 
When he had obtained from the Government the necessary 
power, he went to work with what he, no doubt, regarded 
as heroic energy, and he had soon under lock and key a vast 
number of ' suspects/ as they were called, taken from every 
town, village, and hillside in Ireland. Parnell, and many of 
his leading supporters in the Irish National party, were among 
the men thus imprisoned. It afterwards became apparent 
that Mr. Forster failed in imprisoning the few real criminals 
whose deeds soon appalled the world, men who had nothing 
whatever to do with Parnell's political movement, and whose 
names are associated only with such deeds as the assassina- 
tion of Lord Frederick Cavendish in the Phoenix Park, Dub- 
lin, on May 6, 1882. A strong feeling was now growing up 
throughout the English public in general, and especially 
among English Radical members of the House of Commons, 
and even of the Government, that Mr. Forster 's policy was 
utterly detrimental to all hopes of establishing peace, har- 
mony, and loyalty in Ireland. Somehow or other an ap- 
proach was made to Mr. Parnell, then in prison, towards some 
sort of understanding by which the hopeless struggle against 
the Irish people could be brought to a close. Parnell himself, 
it was understood, began to be alarmed by the reports of the 
disturbed condition of Ireland which reached him in prison, 
and he knew that if he were free once more he could do some- 
thing to keep agitation within due bounds. The result was 
that Parnell and several other Irish members of Parliament 
were set at liberty. Thereupon, Mr. Forster at once resigned 
office. He was for carrying on the stand-up fight against the 
Irish people to the last, and he would not remain in Dublin 
Castle under any other conditions. The Chief Secretaryship 



440 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxvill. 

was offered to Sir Charles Dilke, but with the stipulation that 
he was not to have a seat in the Cabinet. Sir Charles Dilke 
refused to accept the office under such conditions, and his 
refusal was entirely justified. The Chief Secretary to the 
Lord Lieutenant is the actual governor of Ireland, and it was 
out of the question that Sir Charles Dilke could undertake 
duties which he was not himself to have any opportunity of 
defending in the Cabinet. The appointment was then con- 
ferred on Lord Frederick Cavendish, brother of Lord Harting- 
ton, and one of the most popular members of the House, es- 
pecially popular among the Irish Nationalist members, to 
whom, while Junior Lord of the Treasury, he was always 
courteous and friendly. All hopeful expectations from this 
appointment were brought to a close by the murders in the 
Phoenix Park, Dublin. The plot of the assassins was doubt- 
less aimed in the first instance against the life of Mr. Thomas 
Burke, the Permanent Under-Secretary to the Lord Lieuten- 
ant. Mr. Burke, it afterwards became known, was just then 
getting the threads of a great murder conspiracy within his 
hands, and the assassins, therefore, determined to remove him. 
Lord Frederick was in company with Mr. Burke in the Phoenix 
Park, and met his death while gallantly striving to rescue his 
friend from the knives of his murderers. The news reached 
London late on the night of Saturday, May 6, 1882, but it was 
not generally known in London until the following day. Prob- 
ably no other piece of news during our time made so great 
an impression on the very appearance of the Sunday streets 
in London. The crimes were at once denounced in a mani- 
festo, issued on behalf of the Irish Nationalists, which bore 
the signatures of Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, and Mr. Davitt. 

The year 1881 was made memorable in English history by 
the death of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Early 
in April he had had a severe attack of bronchial asthma, and 
a keen east wind was blowing, which was always trying to 
him. For some time, however, the bulletins did not give the 
public any reason to suppose that the sick man was in serious 
danger. At last it became clear that the danger was immi- 
nent, and crowds came to the house in Curzon Street every day 
to inquire as to his condition, these crowds including num- 
bers who had ever been his political opponents. He died 
about half-past four o'clock on the morning of Tuesday, April 
19. No throb of pain seems to have troubled his parting 
moments. His spirit passed away in quiet, after a life of so 
much unrest. Those who watched over him said that a few 
minutes before his death he raised himself a little in his bed, 



CH. xxviii. MR. GLADSTONE'S ADMINISTRATION. 441 

stretched himself out in a kind of approach to the attitude 
which he was accustomed to assume when he rose in the House 
of Commons, and his lips moved without sending out any 
words. It may well be that his dying fancy gave him back 
his old place in Parliamentarjr debate, and he thought he was 
rising once more to address that House of Commons to which 
his life had been devoted, and where he had won the fame he 
most highly prized. If this were so, no end could be more 
characteristic of the man, no dying fancy could have given 
him so really back to life, even for that passing instant which 
closed his dazzling career. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

EGYPT AND IRELAND 

The condition of Egypt was again beginning to give great 
trouble to the English Government. A sudden movement 
had grown up among the Egyptian populations, which took 
shape in the form of a national party, whose inspiring idea 
was that Egypt ought to be for the Egyptians. This national 
party, hitherto vague and unformed, received a more definite 
policy from a leader who suddenly came to the front — Arabi 
Bey, afterwards Arabi Pasha. The Khedive, the nominal 
Sovereign of Egypt, made Arabi his War Minister, and as 
such, really master of the Egyptian administration. Arabi 
was a man of great intelligence, but he knew little or nothing 
of European affairs, and could not speak any European lan- 
guage. The air throughout Egypt seemed to be filled with 
rumours about some great and near approaching crisis, and 
the ironclads of England and France were ordered to Alex- 
andria, France, as well as England, being still concerned in 
directing the affairs of Egypt. The English and French 
diplomatists urged that Arabi and his immediate colleagues 
in the national movement should be compelled to quit the 
country. Arabi and his colleagues offered to resign their 
ministerial places, and the Khedive tried to form a new Min- 
istry, but failed because the leaders of the army declared 
against him, and refused to obey the 'Dual Control/ the 
authority of England and France. Weeks, and even months, 
of intense anxiety ensued. Arabi set to work at the defences 
of Alexandria, and pushed them on with great energy and 



442 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxix. 

speed. Suddenly, on June 11, 1882, a disturbance broke out 
between the natives and the Europeans in Alexandria. No 
one could tell how it began or why; whether it was a deliber- 
ate plot on the part of any of the native population or wheth- 
er it was merely the case of the chance spark and the exposed 
powder-cask. There was a riot; several French and English 
subjects were killed; the English consul was dragged from his 
carriage and severely wounded, and was rescued with much 
difficulty. The British Government was still reluctant to 
land troops, although it had made clearly known its resolve 
to protect the Khedive, if necessary, against Arabi or anyone 
else. England's hesitation was in great measure due to her 
desire to maintain concerted action with France; and France, 
for various reasons, was not inclined any longer to intervene 
actively in the affairs of Egypt. Meanwhile, Arabi Pasha, 
apparently acting on his own impulse independently of the 
Khedive, was carrying on steadily the work of the fortifica- 
tions, and assuming an attitude of defiance to England. Then, 
at last, the English authorities determined to act alone. Sir 
Beauchamp Seymour, the admiral in command of the English 
fleet, was ordered to prevent the progress of the fortifications, 
and on the night of July 10 the English fleet took up its posi- 
tion, while that same night the French fleet, acting upon 
orders from Paris, left the waters of Alexandria, and thus 
there was a practical end of the Dual Control. The forts 
commanding the harbour were not surrendered, and the bom- 
bardment began early on the morning of July 11. The Egyp- 
tian forces could not make any prolonged resistance, and the 
news was soon brought to the British admiral that Arabi and 
his troops had withdrawn from the whole line of fortifications, 
and that Alexandria was in a condition of the wildest lawless- 
ness and tumult. Then Sir Beauchamp Seymour sent all the 
sailors he had to repress disorder and outrage in the town. 
In the meantime the native population had attacked all for- 
eigners who came in their way, and had destroyed several pub- 
lic buildings merely for the reason that these buildings were 
admired by the hated foreigners. It is estimated that more 
than 2,000 Europeans, chiefly Levantines, had been put to 
death during the disorders. Order was restored at last by the 
sailors and marines of the English fleet, and the Khedive was 
once more installed in Alexandria under the care of the ad- 
miral and the fleet. England had still some fighting to do, 
and Sir Garnet Wolseley was sent to command the operations. 
Arabi had entrenched himself at Tel-el-Kebir. Sir Garnet 
Wolseley acted with splendid skill and promptitude, and won a 



ch. xxix. EGYPT AND IRELAND. 443 

quick success. Arabi was made a prisoner, was sentenced to 
death on the charge of rebellion against the Khedive, but the 
Khedive commuted the sentence to one of perpetual banish- 
ment, and Arabi, with some of his officers, was sent into exile 
in Ceylon, he and his comrades giving their parole to the Eng- 
lish Government that they would not make any attempt to 
escape from the island. Since that time England has occu- 
pied Egypt on her own account. 

The bombardment of Alexandria led among other results 
to John Bright 's resignation of his place in Mr. Gladstone's 
Cabinet and his final farewell to office. Mr. Bright was en- 
tirely opposed to the warlike policy which had led to the 
bombardment of Alexandria. He said in a speech which he 
made at the time, ' For forty years, at least, I have endeavoured 
to teach my countrymen an opinion and doctrine which I 
hold — namely, that the moral law is intended not only for 
individual life, but for the life and practice of States in their 
dealings with one another, and I think that in the present 
case there has been a manifest violation both of international 
law and of the moral law, and therefore it is impossible for me 
to give my support to it.' Mr. Bright further explained that 
he had held to his place in the Cabinet so long because of 
his profound regard for Mr. Gladstone, and his feeling that 
until the policy of the Government had actually declared it- 
self for the worst he ought not to put any difficulties in Mr. 
Gladstone's way by his resignation. There was something 
natural and very touching in the feeling which moved Mr. 
Bright to hold on to the last before putting into action the 
resolve to withdraw from the side of the Prime Minister. 

In the following session of Parliament a royal message on 
April 16, recommended that annuities of 2,000Z. for two lives 
should be granted to Lord Alcester and Lord Wolseley — Sir 
Beauchamp Seymour and Sir Garnet Wolseley, on whom the 
titles had been conferred for their services in Egypt. Mr. 
Labouchere started an opposition to the grant, recommended 
for Lord Alcester. In all ordinary cases such a royal message 
is accepted as an order to be obeyed, and even when on rare 
occasions any opposition has been started, it has usually been 
confined to a very small knot of men who object to war as 
war, and therefore would refuse to give to a soldier anything 
beyond his regulation pay. But the opposition started in 
this instance by Mr. Labouchere had evidently greater weight 
than that of a merely platonic objection to war. A large 
number of Radical members left the House when the division 
bell rang, because they were unwilling to oppose the Govern- 



444 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. XXIX. 

ment, and yet could not conscientiously support it in this 
instance, while so considerable a minority as seventy-seven 
Liberals supported Mr. Labouchere's amendment against a 
majority of 209, in which the Conservative leaders and their 
followers had to be reckoned. The opposition to Lord Wolse- 
ley's pension was taken separately, and on somewhat differ- 
ent grounds — the ground that Lord Alcester's position typi- 
fied the beginning of the Government's intervention in Egypt, 
while Lord Wolseley had only to come in afterwards and take 
up the conclusion of the work which the bombardment of 
Alexandria had rendered inevitable. The opposition to Lord 
Wolseley 's pension was led by Mr. Broadhurst and Mr. Burt, 
two of the working-men's representatives in the House of 
Commons, and it obtained nftj^-five votes against 178 sup- 
porting the Ministerial proposition. The Ministerial majority 
in both instances made it clear that public opinion did not 
give much support to the policy of warlike intervention in the 
affairs of Egypt, and this debate in the House of Commons, 
following so closely on the resignation of Mr. Bright, tended 
very much to weaken the authority of Mr. Gladstone's Gov- 
ernment with some of the very men to whom he might most 
naturally have looked for support. Many Radicals had come 
to the belief that the Government really knew no more than 
anybody else at home about what was going to happen in 
Egypt, and that it had been led into a course of action op- 
posed to all the traditions of the Liberal party. 

One utterly needless sacrifice during the Egyptian crisis 
was made in the person of Professor Edward Palmer, who as 
an Oriental scholar and linguist never had a superior. In the 
summer of 1882 he was sent out by the authorities, either 
here or in Egypt, on a mission to prevent, if possible, any 
alliance between Arabi Pasha and the Bedouin tribes of the 
desert. Palmer never should have been sent on such a mis- 
sion, because it naturally seemed to the enemies of England 
that his work was only too like that of a dangerous spy sent 
to find out their strength. He and his companions were capt- 
ured by hostile Arabs and at once put to death. The Eng- 
lish Government afterwards had some of his captors brought 
to trial, and five of them were convicted and executed. The 
remains of Palmer and some of his companions were recovered, 
brought back to England, and laid under the dome of St. 
Paul's. 

Since the days of Arabi Pasha, Egypt has been held nomi- 
nally under the rule of the Khedive, but in fact under the 
dominion of England. The traditional or imaginary sover- 



ch. xxix. EGYPT AND IRELAND. 445 

eignty which the Sultan of Turkey was allowed to maintain 
has long since become a mere shadow. 

In the meantime things were not going well with the Gov- 
ernment in the House of Commons. The Irish question was 
becoming more and more difficult and exacting. Outside as 
well as inside the House the air began to be disturbed by 
rumours of Irish American plots, for the working up of rebel- 
lion in Ireland, and even for the use of dynamite to assist in 
the work. It may be said, without any possibility of con- 
tradiction, that no recognised Irish National party in Ireland 
or in America ever sanctioned the use of dynamite, and that 
the few men who were afterwards proved to have taken part 
in such plots were worthless, and were utterly repudiated by 
the vast masses of their countrymen at home and in the 
United States. In this country, however, it was a common 
belief among many sets, and even among some writers for the 
Press, that the Fenians and the dynamiters were one and the 
same party. Nothing could have been more unjust to the 
Fenians, whose only aim was to gain the freedom of their 
country by open rebellion. It is only fair to say that during 
the whole time of the dynamite attempts the English public 
in general did not lose its head for a moment. It was judged 
necessary to strengthen the existing Explosives Act by a pro- 
vision making the mere accumulation of explosive material, 
except for avowed and legitimate purposes, a penal offence. 
The measure was introduced by Sir William Harcourt, and 
was passed through all its stages in one night — a rare event 
in the history of the House. Mr. Parnell recommended his 
followers to offer no opposition to the measure, and it then 
went through the House of Lords in a single night, although 
Lord Salisbury, speaking for the Conservative party, denied 
that any sufficient case had been made out for a measure 
which, he said, the Government had introduced under the in- 
fluence of a sudden panic. Other Conservative peers also 
criticised the Bill sharply, but the Conservative party in gen- 
eral would not take the responsibility of opposing the meas- 
ure, and after the one night of discussion the Bill received the 
Royal Assent the next day. As a matter of fact, all the real- 
ly serious attempts at outrage by dynamite took place after 
the Explosives Bill had been passed into law. Another fact 
to be noticed is that in some of the most serious prosecutions 
of men charged with dynamite plots, the Government did not 
put the prisoners on trial under the provisions of the Ex- 
plosives Act, but under the provisions of the Treasons Felony 
Act, passed in 1848. But the new phase of crime did un- 



446 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxix. 

doubtedly add very much to the troubles of the Government, 
and of the Irish Nationalist members. Many measures were 
being brought forward both by the Government and by the 
Irish party for dealing with the Irish problem. 

There were some Irishmen then to whom the painful doubt 
occurred whether it would not be better for the whole Irish 
peasant and artisan population to migrate to the United 
States, Canada, and Australasia, and leave the island of their 
birth to Dublin Castle and to the landlord class. But this 
extremely pessimistic view of Ireland's condition was not 
likely to be accepted by the majority of the men and women 
still living in Ireland. Various emigration schemes were 
promoted by undoubtedly patriotic Irishmen, with some 
hope of relieving the threatened distress. Mr. Parnell put 
forward at one time proposals for the systematic and whole- 
sale removal of families from what were called the ' congested 
districts ' in Ireland to other regions where the whole soil was 
given up to the pasture of cattle. These proposals, which 
were indeed desperate remedies, came to little or nothing. 
Meanwhile the House of Commons was overdone with work, 
and the business of England, Ireland, and Scotland had to be 
almost entirely neglected, in order that the business of Ire- 
land might be taken in hand and allowed to drop out of hand 
again. 

During this time of trouble, in February, 1883, an event 
took place of much importance to literature and to political 
life. This was the election of Mr. John Morlej r as the repre- 
sentative of Newcastle-on-Tyne by a large majority over a 
Conservative candidate, at a by-election caused by the death 
of Mr. Ashton Dilke, Sir Charles Dilke's brother. Mr. Morley 
had twice before stood for Parliament, and on both occasions 
had been defeated. He was one of the foremost literary men, 
and was destined to prove himself a genuine and a powerful 
influence in practical statesmanship as well. 

The troubles to the Gladstone Government were internal 
and external. One great external trouble was that in Egypt, 
where the Mahdi still held his own, and the hero Gordon was 
still shut up in Khartoum. An effort was made to rescue 
Gordon, under the command of Lord Wolseley, after this ex- 
pedition created Viscount, a thoroughly capable leader for 
any such expedition. The English commander had to fight 
his way step by step, and many brave lives had to be sac- 
rificed. One of the most lamented of the dead was Colonel 
Frederick Burnaby, the very type of a chivalrous, adventurous 
soldier. The expedition proved a sad failure. No commander 



CH. xxix. EGYPT AND IRELAND. 447 

could have forced his way to Khartoum under such difficulties 
in time to rescue General Gordon. The death of the great 
soldier had come about before the relief force could reach him. 
The troubles of the Government were seriously added to by 
a number of dynamite plots exploding in different parts of 
London. On May 30, 1884, there was a dynamite explosion 
at the Junior Carlton Club and in Scotland Yard, and a great 
deal of damage was done to the Club-house and also to the 
Army and Navy Club and other buildings in the near vicin- 
ity. No lives were lost in these explosions, although the plots 
had evidently been carried out deliberately in regions where 
a prodigal destruction of life might have been expected. On 
December 13 a dynamite attempt was made upon London 
Bridge. Two lives are believed to have been lost in this at- 
tempt; but they were those of the dynamiters who were en- 
deavouring to carry out the work of destruction. About two 
in the afternoon of January 24, 1885, the Tower of London 
and the Houses of Parliament were the scenes of simultaneous 
explosions. The explosion in the House of Commons brought 
the Peers' gallery and the strangers' gallery into a shapeless 
mass of ruin, tore up the green benches of the members almost 
everywhere, and made the House of Commons look a melan- 
choly scene of wreckage. Two policemen were seriously in- 
jured. Fortunately the House is hardly ever sitting at that 
hour on Saturday, and the explosion therefore did not cause 
the sacrifice of any human lives. 

During this period, despite many troublous influences at 
home and abroad, Mr. Gladstone was active with some im- 
portant measures of electoral reform. He prepared a reform 
scheme which he divided into two separate measures. The 
first was the Franchise Bill, which he introduced on February 
29, 1884, by which it was proposed to put the county popula- 
tions on the same level as the population of cities and towns. 
The ten pounds clear yearly value franchise would be ex- 
tended to land without nouses or buildings, while there was to 
be created what Mr. Gladstone proposed to call a service fran- 
chise for persons who were inhabitants of a house but who 
were neither occupiers nor tenants — men like the officials of 
great institutions and men who occupied houses as caretakers. 
This measure proposed to add about 2,000,000 voters to the 
constituencies. The Bill was read a third time on the 27th of 
June, and then went up to the Lords, where it was forced 
upon the Peers after much discussion and various futile at- 
tempts at compromise, and was passed during the autumn 
session of 1884, on December 6. On December 1, soon after 



448 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. XXIX. 

the third reading of the Franchise Bill, Mr. Gladstone intro- 
duced a measure for the redistribution of seats in order to 
give something like a suitable and equitable extent and nu- 
merical representation to each of the great electoral divisions 
in Great Britain and Ireland, extinguishing or rather absorb- 
ing some old constituencies and creating some new ones. This 
measure, too, after much discussion, was carried through both 
Houses, and received the Royal assent on June 25, 1885. Thus 
were two highly important measures of civil reform brought 
to success during this troubled time. 

It is worthy of notice as an illustration of the differences 
of opinion among Liberals with regard to some of the pro- 
visions in these new measures that Mr. Leonard Courtney, 
then Financial Secretary to the Treasury, was so strongly op- 
posed to the division of nearly all the great cities into differ- 
ent wards or districts, each returning one member, that he 
resigned his office and passed for the time into unofficial life. 
Mr. Courtney had already made himself distinguished alike as 
a writer and as a politician by his high culture and his ad- 
vanced views, and he had yet a long and a remarkable political 
career before him. 

During the early days of 1884 the House of Commons saw 
a change in the occupant of the Speaker's chair. Sir Henry 
Brand had begun to find the work of his office as Speaker 
growing too hard and too heavy for his years, and he resigned 
his position, going to the House of Lords with the title of Lord 
Hampden. His successor was Mr. Arthur Peel, son. of the 
great statesman. Arthur Peel had been a member of the 
House of Commons for some twenty years, and for a consider- 
able time a Whip of the Liberal party. During all that time 
he had never made a speech of any pretension, and it was 
therefore a surprise to everyone when, after his election to 
the Speaker's chair, he offered his thanks in one of the most 
remarkable and eloquent speeches heard in the House of Com- 
mons during recent times. The House suddenly awakened to 
the knowledge that its members had among them another 
Peel who might fairly compare in Parliamentary eloquence 
with the great Sir Robert himself, and the discovery was made 
just on the occasion which for all intents and purposes com- 
pelled the orator to that same silence in the future which he 
had of his own choice imposed on himself in the past. 

The fall of the Administration was close at hand. It was 
brought about by some of the provisions of the Budget intro- 
duced by Mr. Childers. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had 
to meet a deficit of somewhat more than a million, and to 



ch. xxix. EGYPT AND IRELAND. 449 

supply this want he proposed to raise the Income Tax from 
sixpence to eightpence in the pound, to increase the spirit 
duty by two shillings a gallon, and the beer duty by one shil- 
ling a barrel. Great objection was raised to the increase of 
the spirit and beer duties, and Mr. Childers offered to reduce 
the increase on the spirit duties to one shilling, and to retain 
the increase in beer duties only for one year. These conces- 
sions were not enough to conciliate the Opposition. Sir 
Michael Hicks-Beach proposed an amendment condemning 
absolutely the increase in these duties, and on June 8, 1885, 
the division was taken, it being thoroughly understood that 
on the result of that vote would depend the existence of the 
Ministry. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach's amendment was sup- 
ported by 264 votes, while 252 were given against it. The 
Govermnent therefore was defeated by a majority of twelve. 
A wild scene of exultation on the part of the triumphant 
Opposition took place. When comparative silence had been 
restored and Mr. Gladstone announced that in consequence 
of the division just taken the Ministry would have to consider 
their position, everybody understood the meaning of his 
words. Next day he informed the House that he had placed 
his resignation in the hands of the Queen, that it had been 
accepted by her Majesty, and that Lord Salisbury had been 
summoned to Balmoral. 

Lord Salisbury had many difficulties in his way. There 
was Egypt to consider; there was Russia to consider; and the 
question of Afghanistan; the perilous condition of Ireland; 
the assumed deficit in the revenue, and there was also the 
Fourth Party. It would have been impossible for Lord 
Salisbury to carry on a government without the co-operation 
of Lord Randolph Churchill, who had been growing greatly 
in popularity and in influence among the Conservative party 
everywhere. Lord Randolph was not really a Tory, was not 
even a Conservative in the old-fashioned meaning of the word. 
He had genuine ideas of his own, and he had also inherit- 
ed Lord Beaconsfield's belief in the possibility of forming a 
Tory democratic party. Lord Salisbury and Lord Randolph 
Churchill came to an agreement, and a Conservative Ministry 
was soon formed. Sir Stafford Northcote was to be banished 
to the House of Lords with the office of First Lord of the 
Treasury, Lord Salisbury becoming Prime Minister and Sec- 
retary, for Foreign Affairs. His tenure of the office was made 
historical by the annexation of that part of Burma which had 
remained up to that time under the rule of the Burmese sov- 
ereign. Lord Randolph Churchill was approintcd Secretary 



45© A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxix. 

for India, and Lord Carnarvon became Viceroy of Ireland, 
with Sir William Hart-Dyke as Chief Secretary. Sir Michael 
Hicks-Beach was Chancellor of the Exchequer with the leader- 
ship of the House of Commons, and Sir Richard Cross, Home 
Secretary. Nothing of great- importance occurred during the 
remainder of the session. The Conservative Government 
found itself in a most awkward position, and was conscious 
that it had no hold on the majority of the present constitu- 
encies. Parliament was prorogued about the usual time in 
August with the understanding that an appeal to the country 
would be made between the close of one session and the open- 
ing of the next. About the middle of the following Decem- 
ber the final results of the elections began to be known. The 
position of the three parties in the House of Commons stood 
thus— the Liberals had 334 members, the Conservatives 250, 
and the Irish Nationalists 86. The evident result of this 
would be that if the Irish Nationalists were to support the 
Liberals, the Liberals would have a very large majority, while 
if the Irish Nationalists decided to support the Tories, the 
Tories might on some critical occasion have a very small 
majority. The Liberal party had, however, gained a decided 
victory at the polls, and a Liberal Government was certain to 
be formed. 

While the elections were still going on a good and great 
Englishman passed quietly out of life. Lord Shaftesbury died 
at Folkestone on October 1, 1885, after a prolonged illness, 
at the age of eighty-four. Lord Shaftesbury's whole life had 
been associated with movements for the physical and moral 
improvement of the lives of the working-classes. During his 
unselfish and noble career, he had put himself at the head of 
every movement which strove to brighten the lives and lighten 
the burdens of the poor. We have already told some of the 
great work he had accomplished by carrying an Act of Parlia- 
ment to prohibit the employment of women and girls under- 
ground in mines and collieries, and many measures of a like 
nature to mitigate the sufferings of all overworked classes in 
these countries. He led the great fight which has set up the 
authority of the State as regards the regulation of labour and 
even in certain instances of private contract. He must have 
had on the whole an ideally happy life, for he was always 
striving to do good for the weak and the lowly, and for the 
most part he was successful in his self-appointed mission. 

Another death which has to be recorded is that of Prince 
Leopold, Duke of Albany, the youngest son of Queen Victoria. 
The Duke of Albany died in his thirty-first year, on March 28, 



CH. xxix. EGYPT AND IRELAND. 



45i 



1884, at Cannes, whither he had gone in a hope of finding 
restoration of his health. He had always been delicate, and 
was from his boyhood given to the habits and the tastes of 
a student. The immediate cause of his death was an acci- 
dental fall down-stairs, which led to an infusion of blood in 
the brain. He did not take any active part in public affairs, 
but when he spoke on any ceremonial occasion his speech 
attracted much notice on account of its intellectual character 
and its genuine eloquence. The Duke had been married near- 
ly two years before to the Princess Helen of Waldeck. 

The new Parliament was opened by the Queen in person 
on January 21, 1886. Everyone knew that Lord Salisbury's 
Government was doomed to go out of office whenever a mo- 
tion for its condemnation should be made in the House of 
Commons. Mr. Jesse Collings, at that time a strong Radical 
and Home Ruler, proposed an amendment to the address in 
which he expressed regret that no measure had been announced 
by Lord Salisbury's Government for the relief of agriculture, 
and especially for affording facilities to agricultural labourers 
to obtain allotments and small holdings on equitable terms 
as to rent and fixity of tenure. This was afterwards known 
as the ' Three acres and a cow ' amendment. It was warmly 
supported by Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Joseph 
Arch, and was strongly opposed by Lord Hartington and Mr. 
Goschen. The amendment was carried by 239 votes against 
250, and Lord Salisbury's Ministry at once went out of office. 
On February 1 Lord Salisbury announced his resignation. 
Thereupon Mr. Gladstone formed an Administration of which 
he became Prime Minister; Sir William Harcourt, Chancellor 
of the Exchequer; Mr. Childers, Home Secretary; Lord Rose- 
bery, Secretary for Foreign Affairs; Lord Granville, Secretary 
for the Colonies; Lord Kimberley, Secretary for India; and 
Mr. John Morley, Chief Secretary to the new Lord Lieutenant 
of Ireland, the Earl of Aberdeen. To the surprise of many 
persons, Mr. Chamberlain came into the Ministry as President 
of the Board of Trade. 

. Lord Hartington and Sir Henry James had positively de- 
clined to hold office in the new Government, as they could 
not accept Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy. 

Parliament reassembled on February 3, and there was 
some delay while writs were moved for in the Commons for 
seats rendered legally vacant by members who had accepted 
office in the new Administration. Mr. Gladstone issued an 
address to the electors of Midlothian, in which he touched 
upon the Irish difficulty, but was somewhat vague with re- 



452 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxix. 

gard to the question of Home Rule. He told his constituents 
that the purpose of the new Government was 'to examine 
carefully whether it is not practical to try some method of 
meeting the present case of Ireland, and ministering to its 
wants, more safe and more effectual, going nearer to the source 
and seat of the mischief and offering more chance of stability, 
than the method of separate and restrictive criminal legislation.' 
On April 8 Mr. Gladstone moved in the House of Commons 
for leave to introduce his Bill to make provision for the better 
government of Ireland. Never in our time has the House of 
Commons been more crowded than on this occasion. The 
doors were opened for the admission of members as early as 
six o'clock in the morning, and many members had arrived 
an hour earlier and planted their backs to the doors in order 
to be able to rush in as soon as the doors were opened. Mr. 
Gladstone's speech lasted for nearly three hours and a half, 
and yet did not seem to any listener one sentence too long. 
He set forth two essential principles of the coming measure. 
The first was that Ireland should have a Parliament of its 
own, and the second that Ireland should have no representa- 
tion in the Imperial Parliament at Westminster. In point of 
fact G rattan's Parliament was to be given back to Ireland, 
without the narrow conditions as to suffrage qualification and 
religion, which had brought about the rebellion of 1798. The 
Irish Parliament, which Mr. Gladstone proposed to create, 
was to be composed of two orders with power in either order 
to demand separate voting, and thus to put a veto on any 
proposal of legislation until the next dissolution, or for at 
least an interval of three years. The first order was to con- 
sist of twenty-eight representative Peers and seventy-five other 
members elected for ten years by voters having an especially 
high qualification of rental or property. The second order — 
the House of Commons — was to consist of 103 members al- 
ready allowed by the Act of Union with the addition of 101 
elected for five years. The Home Rule Bill was to be accom- 
panied or followed by a measure for buying out the Irish 
landlords with the object of establishing a peasant proprie- 
tary on the soil of Ireland. Mr. Gladstone's measure aroused 
from the first a great many objections even among thorough- 
going English, Welsh, and Scotch Radicals. One objection 
was to the proposal that Ireland while having a Parliament 
of its own should have no representation in the Imperial 
Parliament. Another objection was that the measure would 
leave Ireland to be taxed by the Imperial Parliament, while 
having no representation of its own at Westminster to pro- 



CH. xxix. EGYPT AND IRELAND. 453 

tect it against an unrightful weight of taxation. The Roman 
Catholics in England, Scotland, and Wales were anxious to 
know who was to look after their religious interests if Ireland 
had no voice in the Imperial Parliament. Mr. George Tre- 
velyan, now Sir George Trevelyan, resigned office in the Gov- 
ernment because he sympathised strongly with some of these 
objections. Mr. Chamberlain withdrew from the Govern- 
ment because of Mr. Gladstone's accompanying land scheme, 
and also because he had now discovered that he was entirely 
opposed to the policy of Home Rule. A new political party 
was constructed on the basis of opposition to the Home Rule 
measure, which included Lord Cowper, who had been Irish 
Viceroy in Mr. Forster's day, Lord Hartington, Lord Salis- 
bury, and Mr. Goschen. The most damaging of all the seces- 
sions from the Liberal party was that of Mr. Bright himself. 
Mr. Bright had during the whole of his public career taken the 
deepest interest in the condition of Ireland, had stood up 
manfully for every proposed reform in Ireland's land tenure 
system, and had again and again preached the doctrine that 
force was no remedy for Irish discontent. He had more than 
once given it as his doctrine that everything ought to be done 
for Ireland by the Imperial Parliament which an Irish Parlia- 
ment could and would do for itself, but he was none the less 
opposed to any proposal for the creation of a separate and 
independent national Parliament in Ireland. The effect of 
Mr. Bright's attitude was disastrous to Mr. Gladstone's Bill. 
The Liberal secessionists held the fate of the measure in their 
hands. On June 7, 1886, the House of Commons came to 
vote on the motion for the second reading of the measure. 
The debate was wound up by a speech from Mr. Gladstone — 
one of the most eloquent and impassioned he had ever made. 
The division was then taken. There were 313 votes for the 
second reading of the Bill, and 343 against it. Mr. Glad- 
stone and his colleagues determined on an immediate dissolu- 
tion of Parliament, and an appeal to the country. The Gen- 
eral Election was brought to an end about the middle of July, 
and the opponents of the Government were found to number 
393, while the Radicals and Home Rulers were only 275, leav- 
ing Mr. Gladstone's Government in a minority of 118. Mr. 
Gladstone and his colleagues resigned office immediately, 
without waiting for any formal pronouncement by a vote in 
the House of Commons. The first great measure of Home 
Rule for Ireland had been defeated not by the votes of Con- 
servatives alone, but by the votes of Conservatives and Liberal 
secessionists. 



454 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxx. 
CHAPTER XXX. 

THE PARNELL COMMISSION — GLADSTONE'S RETIREMENT. 

The Conservatives of course came back into office with Lord 
Salisbury as Prime Minister. There was not much novelty 
in the composition of the Administration, except that Lord 
Randolph Churchill became Chancellor of the Exchequer and 
Leader of the House of Commons and Sir Michael Hicks- 
Beach accepted the office of Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieu- 
tenant. The interest of the public centered itself upon Lord 
Randolph Churchill. He had made a distinct success as Sec- 
retary of State for India, and people were wondering what he 
would do when put in the very different position of Chancellor 
of the Exchequer. He did indeed give the public before long 
quite a new surprise. On December 23, 1886, the announce- 
ment was made that Lord Randolph Churchill had resigned 
the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer and had absolutely 
withdrawn from Lord Salisbury's Administration. The mo- 
ment he became Chancellor of the Exchequer he applied his 
whole mind to the business of the office, and he seemed to 
have found the true scope of his intellect in the work of finance. 
It afterwards appeared that he had written a letter to Lord 
Salisbury in which he insisted on certain financial arrange- 
ments being carried out as a condition essential to his re- 
maining in office. Lord Salisbury could not see his way to 
yield, and thereupon Lord Randolph Churchill resigned his 
office. The Houses of Parliament were opened on January 
22, 1887, and in the debate on the Address in the House of 
Commons Lord Randolph explained his reasons for his resig- 
nation of office. He announced that he had the permission 
of the Sovereign to give his explanation to the House, and 
then he declared that he resigned because he was unable to 
accept the estimates for the support of the Army and the 
Navy in the coming year. He had pledged himself to economy 
and to retrenchment of expenses, and he was convinced from 
his recent experience in the office of Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer that such a policy could well be carried out, and be- 
lieving and knowing that, he could not continue to hold his 
place in an Administration which had made no profession of 
any effective retrenchment in the expenditure of the services. 
Mr. W. H. Smith, the leader of the House, made but a poor 



CH. xxx. THE PARNELL COMMISSION. 455 

reply to Lord Randolph's statement. What Lord Randolph 
Churchill wanted, as the House and the public knew well, 
was a genuine principle of retrenchment, which would have 
kept the country out of fantastic and costly enterprises and 
out of ' bloated armaments' generally, and would have ac- 
knowledged in practice that the great strength of the Empire 
lay in the contentment of her domestic populations. Lord 
Randolph Churchill then passed out of public life an honest 
and honourable martyr to his own strong convictions. He 
had never been in really robust health, and he had always 
put on himself more work than his frame could bear. The 
shadow of an early death was coming on him, and we may 
anticipate history so far as to say that his life came to an end 
on January 24, 1895. 

The first months of the new Ministry's existence were sud- 
denly and sadly overclouded by the death of Lord Iddesleigh, 
who will always be better known in political history as Sir 
Stafford Northcote. On January 12, 1887, Lord Iddesleigh 
went to make a call on Lord Salisbury at the Prime Minister's 
official residence, and while Lord Salisbury was actually wait- 
ing to receive him, Lord Iddesleigh, who had reached the ante- 
room, sank into a chair, fainted, and died within a quarter of 
an hour. He had for many years suffered from some ailment 
of the heart, which made it possible that any sudden accident 
or excitement, physical or mental, might have a fatal end. 
Sir Stafford Northcote had been created Earl of Iddesleigh in 
1885, a nominal promotion for which he had no ambition, and 
which in public opinion seemed to carry with it the idea that 
he was not regarded as strong enough for the leadership of 
the House of Commons. He was, however, a man of great 
ability, a clever debater, and had a wide knowledge of do- 
mestic and foreign affairs. His nature was absolutely unself- 
ish and his career blameless. His mourners 'were two hosts 
— his friends and foes' — political foes, that is, for he never 
could have had a personal enemy. 

On April 18, 1887, the world was startled by the publication 

in the Times newspaper of a letter professing to be signed by 

Mr. Parnell, dated May 15, 1882, a few days after the murders 

in Phoenix Park. The letter, which appeared to be addressed 

to a man who had written to Parnell complaining of the horror 

of the Phoenix Park crimes which Parnell had emphatically 

expressed in the House of Commons, said that 'to denounce 

the murders was the only course open to us — to do that 

promptly was plainly our best policy.' And went on to say, 

'though I regret the accident of Lord Frederick Cavendish's 
30 



456 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. XXX. 

death, I cannot refuse to admit that Burke got no more than 
his deserts.' The Times published other letters purporting 
to be signed by Mr. Parnell, and all in the same spirit. Some 
of these letters would have been set down at once by anyone 
who knew Mr. Parnell as not merely forgeries, but very stupid 
forgeries, for the reason, if nothing more, that they contained 
absurd errors in spelling. On the day when the letter was 
published in the Times, the House of Commons was engaged 
in a debate on a new Coercion Bill for Ireland, introduced by 
the Conservative Government, and Mr. Sexton, one of the 
most distinguished of the Irish National members, without 
waiting for any communication with Parnell, denounced the 
letter as 'a base, manifest, clumsy, and malignant forgery.' 
Parnell came into the House while Mr. Sexton was speaking, 
and when he got a chance of making a statement, declared the 
letter to be 'a villainous and bare-faced forgery.' He told the 
House that 'if I had been in the Phoenix Park that day I 
would have stood between Lord Frederick Cavendish and the 
daggers of the assassins and between the daggers and Mr. 
Burke as well.' 

The letters were given or sold to the Times by a man named 
Pigott, a person who had once conducted a Dublin Nationalist 
newspaper, but failing in that he tried to live by begging let- 
ters and by blackmail. Pigott had written to some of Mr. 
Parnell's intimate associates beseeching them to get him help 
from Mr. Parnell out of the National funds, and Parnell had 
again and again warned his friends not to answer the letters 
of such a man. Parnell, in the House of Commons, challenged 
the fullest investigation, and declared himself quite willing 
to submit the whole matter to the judgment of a Committee 
of the House of Commons, even of a Committee to be com- 
posed exclusively of members of the Conservative party. In 
the end the Government proposed the appointment of a 
Special Commission of three Judges to inquire into the whole 
question, and an Act was passed appointing a Commission 
with Sir James Hannen as its president. Mr. Justice Day 
and Mr. Justice A. L. Smith were the other members. The 
Commission was really an inquiry into the conduct of the 
Nationalist party. The court began its work on October 22, 
1888. The Attorney-General of the Conservative Govern- 
ment conducted the case for the Times, and the leading counsel 
on Mr. Parnell's side was Sir Charles Russell, afterwards Lord 
Russell of Killowen and Chief Justice of England. The de- 
fendants in the proceedings were in fact the whole body of the 
Irish Nationalist members and the members of the various 



CH. xxx. THE PARNELL COMMISSION 457 

National leagues and organisations. Pigott's case proved an 
abject failure. Under the merciless cross-examination of Sir 
Charles Russell, the wretched man utterly broke down. His 
whole past life and character were made known. He fled 
from the country, took refuge in Madrid, and there, a warrant 
having been issued for his arrest, he committed suicide. The 
Commission, however, still continued to inquire into the doings 
of the National organisations in Ireland, and it was not until 
February 13, 1890, that the report of the Special Commission 
was issued. The Judges declared that the members of Parlia- 
ment, who were the defendants in the case, were not engaged 
in any conspiracy to establish the separate independence of 
Ireland. They found that the charge of insincerity in de- 
nouncing crime was not established against the defendants, 
and of course they found that the letters professing to come 
from Mr. Parnell were forgeries. The Judges found also that 
the defendants had not paid anyone to commit crime, but 
that some of them did incite to intimidation, although not to 
the commission of more serious offences. By the public in 
general, even by those who least sympathised with the political 
action of Mr. Parnell and his colleagues, the report was ac- 
cepted simply as a verdict of acquittal. The first time Par- 
nell appeared in the House of Commons after the issue of the 
report, the whole liberal party, including the occupants of 
the front Opposition bench, rose to their feet, and standing, 
cheered him again and again, while many even of the Tory 
ranks joined in the demonstration. It was felt to be an hon- 
ourable testimony of sympathy offered to a man who had been 
cruelly calumniated, and who had obtained a verdict of ac- 
quittal from a tribunal created by his political opponents to 
inquire into his character and his career. 

Early in the year 1887 Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, on account 
of a serious, but fortunately temporary, affection of his eye- 
sight, was compelled to resign the office of Chief Secretary for 
Ireland, and Mr. Arthur Balfour, up to that time Secretary for 
Scotland, was appointed his successor. On May 17, in the 
same year, Mr. W. H. Smith, leader of the House after the 
resignation of Lord Randolph Churchill, proposed that in 
celebration of the fiftieth year of Queen Victoria's reign, the 
House should attend at St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, 
on the following Sunday. The great day of celebration was 
June 21. The Jubilee was shared in almost all over the world. 
Everyone who had any interest in such subjects knew that 
the Queen was the first constitutional sovereign who ever 
occupied the throne of England and one of the best of English 



458 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxx. 

sovereigns. If the Irish people as a whole bore no part in the 
proceedings, it must be remembered that at the very time 
when London was celebrating the Royal Jubilee the Irish 
Nationalist members were struggling vainly against the pass- 
ing of a Coercion Bill for Ireland, which no man in his senses 
would have thought of applying to England or Scotland. No 
educated Irishman imagined for a moment that the Queen 
was responsible for the system of legislation too long pursued 
towards Ireland. The people of Ireland generally had a re- 
spect for the Queen personally, but the feeling was that Ireland 
had been left out in the cold, that she was only the poor step- 
sister, and that she could have nothing to do with the raptur- 
ous celebration of the reign of any English sovereign. 

The Conservative Government did some good work during 
its five or six years of power. How to govern London had 
been for many years a most perplexing question. At one 
end of the great metropolis there was the corporation of the 
City presided over by the Lord Mayor who was chosen annually 
to fill the office. The City of London was only a small corner 
of the whole metropolis. Outside the City the metropolis had 
been managed up to a certain date on the parish vestry sys- 
tem. The regulations of one vestry were often totally differ- 
ent from those of another. In 1888 a Royal Commission was 
issued to inquire into the whole conditions and operations of 
the then existing metropolitan system of government. The 
result of this inquiry was the creation of the London County 
Council entrusted with the full municipal government of that 
vast agglomeration of cities and towns outside the City of 
London which belonged to the metropolis of England, a thor- 
oughly representative body of the whole community of Lon- 
don. On March 27, 1889,*Mr. John Bright died. 

In the meanwhile the Conservative Government was be- 
coming more and more confronted by political difficulties. 
The departments seem to have been all managed with capac- 
ity and care, but there were several great political questions 
absorbing the attention of the public in general, and on these 
the Government had nothing to say. It became evident that 
there must be a new appeal to the country by means of a 
General Election, and on June 28, 1892, the sentence of dis- 
solution was passed and the preparations for an appeal to the 
country began. After the General Election, Parliament met 
on August 4. The Conservatives were still nominally in 
power. Mr. Asquith, on the part of the Liberals, moved a 
vote of want of confidence in the Conservative Government, 
and when the division came to be taken his motion was sup- 



CH. xxx. THE PARNELL COMMISSION. 459 

ported by 350 members and opposed by 310, showing a ma- 
jority of forty in its favour. The majority of forty was de- 
cisive. Lord Salisbury's Administration came to an end, and 
Mr. Gladstone returned to power. Mr. Asquith was made 
Home Secretary; Sir William Harcourt, Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer; Lord Rosebery, Secretary for Foreign Affairs; Mr. 
Campbell-Bannerman, Secretary for War; Mr. Bryce, the 
historian of The Holy Roman Empire, Chancellor of the Duchy 
of Lancaster ; and Mr. John Morley was once again Chief Sec- 
retary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The new Cabinet 
at once set to work, as everyone expected it would, on the 
preparation of another Home Rule Bill for Ireland. The new 
measure introduced by Mr. Gladstone, February 13, 1893, 
proposed to retain a certain proportion of Irish representa- 
tives in the Imperial House of Commons. It will be remem- 
bered that the exclusion of all Irish representation from the 
Westminster Parliament was the cause of some of the strong- 
est objections raised against Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule 
scheme. The new measure proposed to set up in Dublin a 
National Parliament having two chambers : a legislative coun- 
cil, to be elected by voters having a rating qualification of 
twenty poimds, and a legislative assembly, to be elected on 
the ordinary franchise which qualified for a vote for the elec- 
tion of a member of Parliament under the existing system in 
Great Britain and Ireland. 

Between the first and the second Home Rule measure a great 
change had taken place in the conditions of the Irish national 
struggle. On October 6, 1891, Charles Stewart Parnell died 
at Brighton. Parnell had become the occasion for a public 
scandal and a trial in the Divorce Court. He made no defence, 
and the claim for divorce was allowed to pass undisputed, and 
Mr. Parnell afterwards married the woman who had been 
Mrs. O'Shea. The case created an immense sensation, and it 
was felt that the approaching General Election might be affect- 
ed to a great extent by the result of the proceedings in the 
Divorce Court. The principal question at issue in the Gen- 
eral Election must be that of Home Rule, and it seemed only 
too certain that the Parnell scandal could not but affect the 
action of a large number of electors and cause them to refrain 
from giving their votes on behalf of Parnell's political cause. 
Most of Parnell's friends and followers thought it desirable 
that he should keep out of Parliament for a few months, and 
that in the mean time the affairs of the party should be man- 
aged by a committee, the members of which should be nomi- 
nated by him. Mr. Gladstone was strongly of opinion that 



460 .4 SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxx. 

some such course ought to be adopted. Mr. Parnell, however, 
refused to withdraw even for a time from public life, and the 
result was that, after many days of debate among the Irish 
members in Committee Room No. 15, the Home Rule party 
broke up for the time. The great majority elected a new 
chairman, and a very small minority went with Parnell. Then 
set in a wild campaign over Ireland, a struggle between the 
minor and the major divisions of the party. Parnell never 
spared himself in the campaign. He travelled night and day, 
addressing great meetings in Ireland everywhere. The re- 
sult was a thorough breakdown in his nerves and physical 
strength. Within a fortnight he was dead — dead at the early 
age, for a public man, of forty-five. Mr. Gladstone openly de- 
plored the sudden and melancholy close of what had been, as 
he called it, 'a really great career.' 

Despite Mr. Parnell's disappearance from public life, and 
the conditions under which he disappeared from life altogether, 
the Home Rule cause made a distinct step in advance under 
Mr. Gladstone's leadership. The measure passed through the 
House of Commons by a majority of 301 against 267, and was 
rejected only by the House of Lords. Many of Mr. Gladstone's 
most devoted followers were strongly of opinion that after the 
decision of the House of Lords he ought to have dissolved 
Parliament and appealed to the country at a General Election 
on the clear direct question of Home Rule for Ireland. Mr. 
Gladstone, however, decided otherwise, and the Administra- 
tion went on as if nothing had happened. It afterwards ap- 
peared that Mr. Gladstone had been for some time determined 
in his own mind to withdraw from the leadership of the Liberal 
party, and indeed altogether from active political life. It 
came to be known that his sight and his hearing had been 
of late years much impaired, and that although, as far as ap- 
pearances went, his physical powers did not seem to have 
deteriorated in any serious way, yet he had found that his 
strength was no longer equal to the incessant duties of his 
position. 

On March 1, 1894, Gladstone spoke for the last time in the 
House of Commons. He spoke in his capacity of Prime Min- 
ister, and his speech made allusion to the difficulties of late 
arising with the House of Lords, which he described as • a ques- 
tion enormously large, a question that has become profoundly 
a truth, a question which will demand a settlement, and must 
at an early date receive that settlement from the highest 
authority.' The House listened with delight to that elo- 
quence which was made so impressive by the thrilling tones 



CH. xxx. GLADSTONE'S RETIREMENT. 461 

of a still unimpaired voice and utterance, and did not then 
know that Mr. Gladstone was leaving it for ever. 

Then came the choice of a successor to the Liberal party, 
and the position of Prime Minister. The choice was practical- 
ly between Lord Rosebery and Sir William Harcourt. Lord 
Rosebery, a man of much and varied capacity, and a brilliant 
debater, became Prime Minister, while Sir William Harcourt 
became Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the Liberal 
party in the House of Commons. The career of the new Gov- 
ernment was made remarkable by the manner of dealing with 
the death duties which was the capital point in the financial 
scheme of Sir William Harcourt. There has not been in our 
times a more important principle set up in public affairs than 
that which Sir William Harcourt put into action when he 
adopted the new scale and arrangement of death duties. The 
principle was that if a man comes in for a large property he 
must pay duties on a different scale from that which applies 
to a man who comes into a small inheritance. 

Except for this great financial measure the new Govern- 
ment did not do much to win for itself an enduring reputation. 
An utterly unexpected event brought the career of the Minis- 
try to an end. On June 21, 1895, the War Minister, the pres- 
ent Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, brought forward an im- 
portant scheme of Army reform. The measure seemed likely 
to be carried through in the most satisfactory way for the 
Ministry, but Mr. St. John Brodrick suddenly brought for- 
ward a motion finding fault with the Government on some 
very small question about the supply of the material of cor- 
dite to the Army. Hardly any interest was taken in the 
amendment, even by the Conservatives, and nobody supposed 
that anything important would take place. W T hen the debate 
dropped and the division was taken, the Government was 
defeated by a majority of seven. The Vote was merely what 
is called in the House of Commons a 'snap-vote/ but the 
members of the Government had begun to find the condition 
of things intolerable, and on June 24 the House of Commons 
and the public learned that the Liberal statesmen had resigned. 
An appeal to the country was made by a General Election, 
and Lord Salisbury came back to power as Prime Minister 
and Foreign Secretary, with Mr. Arthur Balfour as First Lord 
of the Treasury and leader of the House of Commons and Sir 
Michael Hicks-Beach as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The 
new Government introduced an Education Bill, one other at- 
tempt to settle the controversy about public education which 
had been going on for some twenty-five years. The difficulty 



462 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. XXX. 

was to find some basis of arrangement between those who con- 
tended that public funds, whether raised by State or rate, 
ought only to be given for the purpose of secular education, 
and those whose conscience would not allow them to accept 
a merely secular education for the children of the people, and 
who insisted that they ought to have equal help towards the 
maintenance of their schools. The new Bill proved a total 
failure, and had to be withdrawn. The Salisbury Adminis- 
tration had its attention drawn away by other and foreign 
difficulties: by the coming up of the Eastern question once 
again. There had been great disturbances in many of the 
provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and even in Constantinople, 
caused by fanatical attacks upon the Armenian Christians, 
and by actual massacres of these Christians in many instances. 
Mr. Gladstone came out of his retirement to raise his protest 
once more against the crimes committed against Christians 
under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. New troubles also 
broke out in the island of Crete, an island thoroughly Greek 
in population, in tradition, in national sentiment, and in 
national purpose. An insurrection against Turkish rule broke 
out in Crete, and the Greek Government determined that it 
must intervene for the rescue of the island. Prince George 
of Greece, the second son of the Greek sovereign, and the 
nephew of the Princess of Wales, was put in command of the 
expedition. The English Government and the English peo- 
ple were on the whole in full sympathy with the Christians 
in the Ottoman Empire, and with the cause of Crete, but the 
difficulty was that Russia would not consent to any European 
intervention for the coercion of Turkey, and that Germany 
was not inclined to encourage any such movement. Thus the 
Ottoman question and Greek question remained for the time 
unsettled. Meantime a dispute arose between Great Britain 
and the United States with regard to the true line of divis- 
ion between British Guiana and the Republic of Venezuela in 
South America. The dispute had been going on at intervals 
for some time, and the American Government claimed a right 
to protect the interests of Venezuela against any foreign power 
according to the principles of the Monroe Doctrine, already 
described in this volume. Lord Salisbury appears to have 
acted with judgment, statesmanship, and good feeling through- 
out the whole of the discussion which followed, a discussion 
which had been going on for a long time, but had not before 
been brought to a decisive stage. It ended in an understand- 
ing for a peaceful adjustment of the whole dispute by means 
of an arbitration treaty. The arbitration treaty set forth the 



CH. xxx. GLADSTONE'S RETIREMENT. 463 

agreement of Great Britain and the United States in a dispute 
with regard to the boundaries of British Guiana and Vene- 
zuela, and provided the plan by which the arbitration was to 
be carried on, and an umpire appointed in case the arbitrators 
should fail to come to a conclusion within two months of their 
nomination. The treaty was signed by the British Ambassa- 
dor at Washington, Sir Julian Pauncefote, and Mr. Olney, the 
American Secretary of State. In the message from President 
Cleveland, which commended the treaty to the American 
Senate, the whole arrangement was described as 'only a long 
step in the right direction as embodying a practical working 
plan by which disputes between the two peoples might reach 
a peaceful adjustment as a matter of course and ordinary 
routine.' When the agreement was signed at Washington, 
Mr. Olney's secretary, it is stated, kept the pen which had 
been used for the purpose as a great historical relic, and he 
was indeed well advised in doing so. 

In the closing days of 1895 the attention of England and 
the world in general was suddenly drawn to the Transvaal 
Republic in South Africa. We have already described the 
Transvaal Republic and told how after the defeat of British 
arms at Majuba Hill the Imperial Government had entered 
into an agreement with the authorities of the South African 
Republic by which England still retained a certain suzerainty 
over the Transvaal. The soil of the Transvaal was rich with 
gold and diamonds, and as this fact gradually became known 
to the world, increasing numbers of immigrants began to 
swarm into that region. There were two great and conspicu- 
ous figures in South Africa at that time. One was President 
Kruger, at the head of the State, and the other was Mr. Cecil 
Rhodes. Kruger was a typical Boer, a man of great ability, 
of absolute integrity, rough in appearance, blunt in manner, 
with a certain characteristic humour and a clear and states- 
manlike mind. Cecil Rhodes was an Englishman brought up 
at one of the great English Universities, who had gone out 
when young to Cape Colony for the benefit of his health, made 
his way there in politics and finance, and became Prime Minis- 
ter of the Colony. He founded the Chartered Company there, 
a sort of South African version of the East India Company. 
It soon became quite evident that the influence of Kruger 
and of Rhodes must come into collision. The collision was 
soon brought about. Dr. Jameson, a Scotchman who had 
settled in South Africa and held a high position in the Char- 
tered Company, put himself at the head of a raid with the 
avowed purpose of crossing the Transvaal frontier in order 



464 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxx. 

to compel President Kruger to do justice to the claims of the 
foreign settlers of the Transvaal to the rights of citizenship, 
which the Boer Government were unwilling to grant them, 
but he was utterly defeated by the Boer forces, and he, with 
all his followers, had to surrender. President Kruger acted 
with great moderation and spared the lives of all the invaders. 
The raiders were sent to England, were tried there, found 
guilty of an unlawful enterprise, and sentenced to short periods 
of imprisonment. The whole dispute ended for the time in a 
protest of President Kruger against what he maintained to 
be an overstraining of the right of suzerainty on the part of 
the English Government, and a declaration that the Trans- 
vaal, while still acknowledging the titular supremacy of Eng- 
land, must claim to have the right of managing her own do- 
mestic affairs for herself and according to her own judgment. 
There were, however, other events to come in the history of 
England's relations with the Transvaal, which belong to a 
later period of our history. 

On February 6, 1897, the London papers contained an 
account of a most interesting and touching appeal made by 
the Prince of Wales to the public in general on the subject 
of a becoming and appropriate method of celebrating the 
sixtieth year of the Queen's reign. 'I feel at liberty/ the 
Prince said, Ho bring to the notice of the inhabitants of the 
metropolis a project lying very near my heart, its object being 
to attach the sentiment of gratitude for the blessings which the 
country has enjoyed during the last sixty years to a scheme 
of permanent beneficence.' The proposal of the Prince was 
to invite subscriptions of one shilling per annum and upwards 
from all classes for 'the Prince of Wales' Hospital Fund for 
London to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the 
Queen's reign.' It certainly would seem that no happier form 
could be found for the celebration of such a jubilee. The 
almost universal feeling of the country went out in answer 
to this appeal. It was felt also that, although the appeal was 
only made on behalf of the hospitals of London, it would find 
a ready and cordial answer from all the great provincial cities 
and towns in these countries. This chapter cannot be closed 
better than with the mention of the fact that all London, and 
indeed all Great Britain, went into joyous preparations for the 
celebration of the year — for the celebration of what it was 
determined to call the 'Diamond Jubilee.' No one could say 
that Queen Victoria did not find a happier Great Britain, 
during this year of celebration, than she found when she came 
to the throne, hardly more than a child, in 1837. It cannot 



CH. xxx. GLADSTONE'S RETIREMENT. 465 

be doubted that the manner in which Queen Victoria dis- 
charged her duties as a constitutional sovereign had much to 
do with this result. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

COLONIAL FEDERATION — SOUTH AFRICAN TROUBLES. 

During the celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 
London, much public attention was attracted by the prominent 
position which the representatives of England's Colonial Em- 
pire were invited to take in the pageantry of the occasion. 
The Annual Register for 1897 tells how the Jubilee procession 
of that year differed in one important particular from that 
which commemorated the Queen's fifty years of sovereignty. 
'On the former occasion,' says the Annual Register, 'the Sov- 
ereigns and Princes of Europe and Asia were the most con- 
spicuous figures in the pageant, which seemed designed to 
show the place occupied by Great Britain and her Queen among 
the nations of the Eastern and the Western world.' But the 
procession of the Diamond Jubilee 'was used/ according to 
the Annual Register, Ho show that semi-independent Colonies 
and far-distant settlements in all parts of the globe looked up 
to the Sovereign of Great Britain as their Queen Mother, 
whose care and protection they cheerfully and loyally ac- 
knowledged. Thus it was that, after the Empress Queen her- 
self, the eyes and acclamations of the crowds which lined the 
route were directed to the Colonial Premiers, the Colonial 
troops, and the dark auxiliaries from our Asiatic and African 
dependencies.' The occasion was, indeed, one of especial sig- 
nificance for the representatives of the Canadian colonies. 
We have already told in this history how, at the opening of 
Queen Victoria's reign, Canada was in rebellion against the 
Government of the Queen, and while the British forces in 
Canada were engaged in crushing the rebellion, a great English 
statesman, Lord Durham, was sent out to take measures for 
the restoration of peace and order in Canada, and the estab- 
lishment of a system of local or national self-government under 
the British Crown, thus making her a willing and loyal partner 
in the Empire and not a constrained dependent. The entire 
success which attended the adoption of Lord Durham's policy 
soon began to make it certain that a policy of the same nature 
must govern the relations of Great Britain with all her other 



466 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. XXXI. 

Colonies. The fact made conspicuous during the celebration 
of the Diamond Jubilee was that among the Colonies there 
prevails one equal desire for a genuine partnership with the 
Imperial system, and that the idea of Colonial separation and 
absolute Colonial independence inspired no movement in 
Canada or Australasia. The Colonial statesmen who were in 
England during the celebration of the Diamond Jubilee ex- 
plained their principles and purposes at many public meetings 
held in the metropolis and in some of the large provincial 
cities. Many leading men, among English political parties, 
put in an appearance at those meetings, expressed their own 
views, and entered freely into the general discussion. The 
Queen's Diamond Jubilee may well be regarded as having thus 
opened a new era in the consolidation and development of the 
Empire over which Queen Victoria ruled. The federation of 
the Colonies was destined to grow with every passing year and 
with every great event, and thus far the omens seem only 
brighter and brighter for the contentment and prosperity of 
England's Colonial Empire. 

The rejoicings over the celebrations of the Diamond Jubilee 
were accompanied, or were immediately followed, by events 
which reminded the Queen's subjects that there were still out- 
lying parts of England's Empire from which came only fore- 
bodings of trouble. The Government had appointed a Com- 
mittee of the House of Commons to inquire into the whole 
history of the disturbances in South Africa brought about by 
the Jameson Raid. In the proceedings of the South Africa 
Committee there occurred what may be called an anti-climax 
to the public rejoicings. The Committee had already in- 
timated that its work of hearing evidence was done, and that 
it only remained to consider and agree upon its report. But 
when the Committee met again after the Whitsuntide recess, 
it was suddenly decided that at least one witness should be 
recalled, and this apparently slight modification of the Com- 
mittee's arrangements caused much public eagerness, curios- 
ity, and excitement. This witness was Miss Flora L. Shaw, a 
well-known authoress and journalist, who had undertaken 
various special commissions to British colonies on behalf of 
the Times newspaper. Many members of the Committee were 
especially anxious to discover the exact nature of the relations 
which had prevailed between Dr. Jameson and Mr. Cecil 
Rhodes, when Prime Minister of Cape Colony, and between 
Dr. Jameson and the Colonial Department at Westminster, 
with regard to the plan and preparations for the Transvaal 
Raid. An impression prevailed among many sections of so- 



CH. xxxi. SOUTH AFRICAN TROUBLES. 467 

ciety in England and in the Colonies that Mr. Rhodes had been 
in full understanding with Dr. Jameson as to the purposes 
and the time of his meditated invasion. There were not a few 
Englishmen and colonists of political position and influence 
who had a strong suspicion that the Colonial Department in 
London had not been altogether unacquainted with the plans 
for the projected raid. The reason for the recall of Miss Shaw 
was to ascertain the full story of certain telegrams which ap- 
peared to have passed between her and Mr. Rhodes, and the 
bearing of those telegrams on the supposed understanding be- 
tween Mr. Rhodes and Dr. Jameson, and possibly also between 
Dr. Jameson and the Colonial Ofhce. Some of Miss Shaw's 
telegrams contained nothing which might not naturally have 
come from the representative of a London newspaper, but they 
suggested that Mr. Rhodes was regarded by that representa- 
tive as one associated in some manner with the enterprise 
which was projected. One telegram sent to him, under his 
telegraphic address, 'Veldschoen,' declared 'delay dangerous.' 
Another contained the words 'held an interview with Secre- 
tary, Transvaal. Left here Saturday for Hague, Berlin, Paris. 
Fear negotiations with these parties. Chamberlain sound in 
case of interference European Powers, but have special reason 
to believe wishes you must do it immediately.' A telegram 
to Miss Shaw's telegraphic address, 'Telamones,' signed for 
C. J. Rhodes, contained these words: 'Inform Chamberlain 
that I shall get through all right if he supports me, but he 
must not send cable like he sent to High Commissioner in. 
South Africa to-day. The crux is I will win and South Africa 
will belong to England.' Another telegram professing to come 
from C. J. Rhodes a day after that just quoted said: 'Unless 
you can make Chamberlain instruct the High Commissioner 
to proceed at once to Johannesburg, the whole position is lost. 
High Commissioner would receive splendid reception and still 
turn position to England's advantage, but must be instructed 
to cable immediately. The instructions must be specific, as 
he is weak, and will take no responsibility.' The suspicions 
aroused by these telegrams pointed naturally enough to a gen- 
eral understanding of the invasion plot between Mr. Rhodes 
and Dr. Jameson, and even between these men and Mr. Cham- 
berlain, then Colonial Secretary. If there were such an under- 
standing there would be nothing surprising in the mere fact 
that they should have confided the whole story in advance to 
the responsible correspondent of an influential London news- 
paper. But the friends of Mr. Rhodes refused to admit that 
he had ever been a sharer in the project, and on the part of 



468 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch, xxxi. 

Mr. Chamberlain and the Colonial Office there was the strong- 
est repudiation of every suggestion that there had been any 
complicity in Dr. Jameson's enterprise. Miss Shaw, when re- 
called by the Committee as a witness, stated that there was 
another telegram of which no record had been kept by the 
telegraphic company. This telegram was sent by her to Mr. 
Rhodes on January 1, 1896, and it stated to the best of her 
recollection that Mr. Chamberlain was 'awfully angry.' She 
explained her messages as merely intended to obtain a full 
knowledge for newspaper purposes of what was actually going 
on in South Africa, and she added that the editor of the Times 
knew nothing of these statements until some weeks after, and 
that she had sent them altogether on her own responsibility. 
She declared emphatically that she never, at any time, gave 
the Colonial Office any information about the project, and had 
never received any information whatever from the Colonial 
Office on the subject. When questioned further about the 
words 'Chamberlain sound,' and that Chamberlain 'wished it 
done immediately,' she stated that she was only embodying in 
these words the impression she derived from public speeches 
made by the Colonial Secretary. Miss Shaw also stated that 
the project of such an invasion had been commonly discussed 
for a long time before it took place, that she had herself talked 
on the subject with one of the under-secretaries to the Colonial 
Office, who had said: 'If the Johannesburgers are going to 
rise, it is to be hoped that they will do it soon.' Mr. Cham- 
berlain at this point interposed with the words 'I said in the 
House of Commons that everybody knew, even the man in the 
street, that there would be an insurrection in Johannesburg, 
but nobody knew of the invasion.' Miss Shaw gave her 
prompt adhesion to this statement, and in answer to further 
questions said that she had always in her evidence drawn an 
absoute distinction between the 'plan' and the 'raid.' As 
she understood the whole situation, Dr. Jameson had been 
asked to have a force in the background in case it should be 
wanted; but the object of the plan was for the Johannes- 
burgers to appeal from the local authority at Pretoria to the 
sovereign Power, and then leave their case wholly in the hands 
of the Imperial Government. She assured the Committee 
that this was the only plan of which she knew anything, and 
that she had no idea whatever of any such project as that of 
the raid which afterwards took place. It might be admitted 
that the explanation was consistent and satisfactory. It 
might well have been that the Johannesburgers merely in- 
tended to appeal to the Imperial Government to rescue them 



CH. xxxi. SOUTH AFRICAN TROUBLES. 469 

from the power of the Transvaal and to bring their region 
under the direct supremacy of the British Crown. Under 
these conditions it would be quite natural that Mr. Rhodes 
should hold frank communication with the Colonial Office as 
to the course which ought to be taken should this or that fore- 
shadowed event come to pass. But the Committee had been 
unable to secure for their present sitting the attendance of 
Dr. Rutherfoord Harris, the sender of some of the telegrams 
just mentioned, whose attendance was thought especially 
necessary at that part of the investigation. There were also 
certain telegrams which were known to be in the possession 
of Mr. Hawksley, who had been solicitor to Mr. Rhodes, and 
as these telegrams had not been produced, the evidence was 
wholly incomplete in regard to the origin and encouragement 
of the Jameson Raid. Mr. Labouchere, a man not at all like- 
ly to suppress or modify his opinions for the convenience of a 
Government or in the interests of any great chartered or other 
company, had taken an active part in the work of the Com- 
mittee and in the examination of witnesses. He now brought 
forward a draft report of his own as an appropriate conclu- 
sion to the investigation. This report declared that, owing to 
the unwillingness of some of the witnesses to disclose all that 
had come to their knowledge, and owing to Mr. Hawksley's 
positive refusal to produce certain telegrams in his possession, 
the inquiry had come to little or nothing so far as the Jameson 
Raid was concerned. Mr. Labouchere 's report frankly ad- 
mitted that there was no evidence to connect the Colonial 
Office or Imperial officials in South Africa with Dr. Jameson's 
enterprise, but he expressed his regret that the alleged com- 
plicity of the Colonial Office had not been made more distinctly 
and pressingly a subject of inquiry. It soon became clear that 
Mr. Labouchere was not likely to have many supporters for 
his report. In the report he had found fault with the indis- 
position shown by the Committee to inquire more closely into 
the relations between the Colonial Office and Mr. Rhodes, and 
urged that it might lead some of the public to suppose that 
there was an amount of truth in the statement of witnesses 
connected with the Jameson plan that the secret aims of Mr. 
Rhodes were more or less clearly revealed to the Colonial 
Office. There was nothing unreasonable or extreme in this 
criticism, but it appeared to have been taken by some mem- 
bers of the Committee as if it implied a direct censure on the 
Colonial Office and the Government. Mr. Labouchere 's re- 
port had really no backing up in the Committee, and the re- 
port adopted by the majority was of a very different nature. 



470 A SHORT HISTORY Of OUR OWN TIMES. CM. Xxxi. 

It condemned to a certain extent the conduct of Mr. Rhodes, 
but the condemnation was carefully qualified. With regard 
to the Jameson Raid the report expressed the opinion that 
although Dr. Jameson went into it without Mr. Rhodes's 
authority, it was always part of the plan that certain forces 
should be used in the Transvaal in the support of an insur- 
rection. The report summed up the case against Mr. Rhodes 
thus : ' Such a policy once embarked upon inevitably involved 
Mr. Rhodes in grave breaches of duty to those whom he owed 
allegiance/ that 'he deceived the High Commissioner repre- 
senting the Imperial Government, he concealed his views from 
his colleagues in the Colonial Ministry and from the board of 
the British South Africa Company, and led his subordinates 
to believe that his plans were approved by his superiors.' 

This very admission justified, of itself, the attitude taken 
up by those members of the Committee who insisted that a 
fuller inquiry ought to have been made into the whole subject 
of Mr. Rhodes's dealing with the Colonial Office. The greater 
the blame to be attached to him the greater was the necessity 
for making it clear that there was no desire on the part of 
the Government to prevent the fullest investigation into the 
action of the Colonial Office. The more a member of the 
Committee felt convinced that Mr. Chamberlain's statement 
was quite satisfactory, the more anxious he ought to have 
been that every inquiry should be encouraged which might 
confirm it. Among a large and intelligent proportion of the 
community a feeling remained that an unwise and even un- 
intelligible objection to a full inquiry into this part of the 
subject had been shown by the majority of the Committee. 
There was a general disappointment with the announced re- 
sults of the inquiry. The report adopted by the majority of 
the Committee, which therefore became the official report of 
the whole Committee, only told the world what it already 
knew well. 

Almost immediately after the report had been published, 
Mr. Balfour, as leader of the House of Commons, was asked 
whether the Government would not set apart a day for the 
discussion of the subject. Mr. Balfour replied that he could 
not see how any useful purpose was to be served by entering 
into such a discussion. Sir Wilfrid Lawson pressed him to 
say whether the Government really meant to take no action 
whatever, and Mr. Labouchere endeavoured to raise what is 
known as a question of privilege. He called the attention 
of the House to the fact that the South Africa Committee 
had had one witness before them, Mr. Hawksley, who had 



CH. xxxi. SOUTH AFRICAN TROUBLES. 471 

positively refused to produce certain documents which the 
Committee had demanded, and he desired to know whether 
it was not within the right of any member of the House to 
move that the witness who had thus acted should be brought 
up at the Bar. The Speaker gave it as his decision that there 
was no precedent for such a course, unless when a Committee 
of inquiry had itself made a special report calling on the House 
to take such action, and the South Africa Committee had 
made no such report. Thereupon, Mr. Leonard Courtney 
created a strong effect by asking the Speaker whether there 
was any precedent for a Committee declining or neglecting 
to make a special report under such peculiar conditions, and 
whether the House itself must be held to have lost its privi- 
lege merely because the Committee had failed to do its duty. 
The Speaker repeated the statement that he knew of no prece- 
dent bearing upon the case, and that he had already given his 
opinion. It seemed as if the Government had scored a vic- 
tory, and might be enabled to bring the session to an end 
without allowing the House any chance of a debate on the 
important questions opened up by the South Africa Com- 
mittee. Mr. Arnold-Forster, however, raised a strong pro- 
test against the attempt made by the Government to bring 
on the Colonial Office vote at a late hour of the sitting of 
July 19, when the session was drawing to its close. He in- 
sisted that it would be out of all reason for the House to pass 
this vote without full and deliberate consideration of the 
momentous questions raised by the state of affairs in South 
Africa. Mr. Balfour replied to Mr. Arnold-Forster 7 s speech 
with a warmth and vehemence unusual with him. He said 
something to the effect that if there were really any strong 
feeling in the House as to the necessity for a full discussion 
of the report of the South Africa Committee, the Government 
might not unnaturally have expected that some question of 
the kind would have come from among the leaders of the 
Opposition. Sir William Harcourt promptly replied that the 
Government hardly needed to wait for a direct demand from 
him before granting the reasonable request that full time 
should be set apart to enable the House to consider thorough- 
ly the important subjects on which it had not yet been allowed 
an opportunity of expressing a distinct opinion. Mr. Balfour, 
thus pressed, said that he would endeavour to find a con- 
venient time for a discussion of the question, urging as a con- 
dition that the subject must be raised in some form which 
would enable the House of Commons to take a conclusive 

division. The more advanced among the Liberals promptly 
31 



472 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. XXXJ. 

acted on this suggestion, and one of their most effective speak- 
ers, Mr. Philip Stanhope, gave notice of a resolution: 'That 
this House regrets the inconclusive action and report of the 
Select Committee on British Africa, and especially the failure 
of that Committee to recommend specific steps with regard 
to Mr. Rhodes, and to report to this House the refusal of Mr. 
Hawksley to obey the order of the Committee to produce 
copies of certain telegrams which he admitted were in his pos- 
session, and which he had already submitted to the Secretary 
of State for the Colonies at his request in July 1896; that Mr. 
Hawksley be ordered to attend at the Bar of the House upon 
a day appointed for the purpose, and then and there produce 
the aforesaid telegrams/ The debate on this motion was 
most interesting and important. Mr. Stanhope in his telling 
speech declared that from the very beginning of the South 
African controversy there had been a marked anxiety on the 
part of the authorities to prevent a full investigation into all 
the subjects involved in that inquiry, and as far as possible 
to stifle public discussion. The immediate effect of this 
speech seemed to favour the idea maintained by the more 
advanced Liberals that the leaders of parties on both sides 
of the House were alike unwilling to give any countenance to 
the proposed discussion. The expectation of most members 
was that some leading man on the Front Opposition Bench 
would rise immediately after Mr. Stanhope's speech to explain 
the attitude of the Liberal leaders. But there was evident 
hesitation on the part of those who occupied the Front Op- 
position Bench, and the Speaker had risen to put the ques- 
tion when Mr. Labouchere prevented the Speaker from going 
any further by entering on the debate himself with satirical 
bitterness. Mr. Labouchere suggested clearly enough that 
there was between the two front benches of the House a con- 
spiracy of silence with regard to the South Africa report. 
Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Chamberlain both interrupted 
the orator to protest against this interpretation of their con- 
duct; but Mr. Labouchere was not a man to be easily dis- 
concerted, and he went on to denounce with great vehemence 
and many sarcastic phrases the conduct of Mr. Rhodes and the 
policy of the majority of the Committee. The debate ended 
in a great majority for the Ministry. There were seventy- 
seven votes given for Mr. Stanhope's resolution and 304 against 
it. But a large number of members who were present during 
the whole of the debate took good care not to appear in either 
of the division lobbies. The victor}?- was for the leaders on 
both sides, the men in office and those who had been in office, 



CH. xxxi. SOUTH AFRICAN TROUBLES. 473 

and might be there again. It was won against the opinion 
of many members on both sides, and that of a large majority 
of the public. Thus ended the work of the South Africa 
Committee. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

GREECE, BUT LIVING GREECE ONCE MORE. 

In 1897 the attention of the world was once again drawn to 
the national struggles and sympathies of Greece. The great 
national movement had come up again in Greece, and through- 
out all the Greek islands, for the rescue of Crete from the 
barbaric tyranny of Ottoman rule. The orgies of Turkish 
misgovernment in Crete became worse every day. The Cre- 
tans at last broke out in actual rebellion against their Turk- 
ish rulers, and the whole sympathy of Greece went with the 
Cretan patriotic insurrection. The great Powers of Europe 
saw that something must be done. Their first idea was to 
obtain for Crete a constitution of her own leaving her still 
under Ottoman dominion, thus to enable the inhabitants to 
have some control over the management of their own affairs 
and to live under the conditions belonging to a civilised state. 
There were two great difficulties in the way of such a com- 
promise. In the first place, it seemed impossible for any 
reasonable man to hope that Crete could work satisfactorily 
a constitution of her own and maintain her population in 
peace and comfort so long as Turkey was allowed to retain 
her sovereignty of the island and to have the right of sending 
Turkish officials and troops to keep the Cretans in what the 
Ottoman government would regard as order. It seemed also 
impossible that either the Cretans themselves or the people 
of the Greek kingdom could be induced to accept as final any 
arrangement, brought about by no matter what diplomatic 
concert, having for its object the maintenance of Ottoman 
sovereignty over the island and the severance of its people 
from complete federation with the Kingdom which represents 
the Hellenic race. Greece was all this time aflame with 
passionate sympathy for the Cretans, and no government 
could maintain itself in the Kingdom if it seemed willing to 
stand calmly by and allow Crete to be annexed once again 
to the dominions of the Sultan. Thus it was that Greece 
proved, in reversal of Byron's melancholy and almost de- 



474 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxxn. 

spairing words, 'living Greece once more/ On February 8, 
1897, the Cretans openly proclaimed the union of their island 
with the kingdom of Greece. The Greek sovereign was com- 
pelled to make some definite demonstration of sympathy 
with the cause of the insurgents. Prince George of Greece, 
a near relative of the King and a connection of the British 
royal family, was sent to Crete with some ships of war and a 
small military force. The Concerted Powers were indeed 
but in poor and doubtful concert as to any action to be taken 
on their part. England and Italy were inclined to favour 
the Greek cause, but most of the other Powers were disposed 
to settle the question for the time by maintaining the existing 
conditions through the exercise of superior strength. Through- 
out England during this crisis the whole force of public opinion, 
outside merely diplomatic circles, was cordially in favour of 
the Cretan claim to become part of the Greek kingdom. 
England and Italy both offered the most decided opposition 
to any action on the part of the Concerted Powers which could 
prevent Greece from giving any help to the Cretan insur- 
rection. Meanwhile the insurrection had actually broken out, 
and Greece was taking an open part in support of the Cretan 
struggle. Russia and France at length agreed to the proposal 
that Prince George of Greece should be appointed Governor- 
General of the island, but Austria and Turkey alike protested 
against this proposal, and in the early part of 1898 both 
Germany and Austria withdrew their military and naval 
forces from Cretan waters, and the European concert was thus 
left to consist of England, France, Russia, and Italy. In the 
meantime a raging outbreak of the Bashi-Bazouks in Crete 
had ended in the massacre of several hundreds of the Christians, 
and in this outbreak many British officers, soldiers, and sailors 
were killed or severely wounded. Then the British Admiral 
took the matter into his own hands, and the town where the 
massacre was perpetrated had to be bombarded by the English 
war vessels before anything like peace could be brought about. 
He sent an ultimatum to the Ottoman Governor insisting on 
the disarmament of the Mussulman inhabitants and the re- 
moval of the Turkish troops. The firmness of the English 
Admiral proved too much for the Turkish Government, and 
his demands were finally accepted. The principal leaders in 
the Mussulman outbreak were arrested and passed over to 
the Admiral's jurisdiction, but the disarmament was only 
carried out in a languid and perfunctory fashion. Then the 
four Powers which now represented the European concert 
— England, France, Russia, and Italy — came to an agree- 



CH. xxxii. GREECE, BUT LIVING GREECE ONCE MORE. 475 

ment that an ultimatum should be sent to the Porte insisting 
on the withdrawal of the Turkish troops and officials from 
Crete within one month, while these Powers undertook to 
provide by their own forces full security for the lives and 
properties of the Mussulman population in the island. The 
ultimatum further announced that if the Porte should either 
refuse this demand or delay acquiescence beyond the specified 
time, the Powers would at once have recourse to any measure 
necessary to carry out their decision. The Ottoman Govern- 
ment had no alternative but to accept these terms, subject 
to the condition that one Turkish military post should be 
allowed to remain in Crete as a symbol of Turkish sovereignty, 
not as a centre or base for any exercise of Turkish force. The 
European Powers apparently did not think it worth their 
while to insist on the withdrawal of this condition, and the 
evacuation of the Turkish troops was thus practically accom- 
plished. Russia now proposed that Prince George of Greece 
should be appointed High Commissioner of the Powers in 
Crete, and not, as before suggested, Governor-General of the 
island under the imaginary sovereignty of the Ottoman power. 
England, France, and Italy accepted the proposal, and the 
Porte could do nothing but accept it likewise. The Greek 
insurgents in Crete believed that they could do nothing better 
at that time than to recognise the high purpose of the four 
Concerted Powers, and they accordingly laid down their arms 
and expressed their thanks to those Powers for the success 
thus far of their interference in the cause of freedom and order. 
Prince George soon made his appearance in Crete and was 
received with natural enthusiasm by the Greek population, 
and also, it was said at the time, with good-will on the part 
of a large proportion of the Mussulmans. It is quite probable 
that many of the Mussulmans were ready to welcome any 
promise for the restoration of order, to prevent the island 
from being made the scene of continuous strife. The block- 
ade maintained by the European Powers came to an end on 
December 26, 1898, a few days after Prince George's arrival. 
Just before leaving, the Admirals issued a farewell proclama- 
tion to the Cretans announcing that the Concerted Powers 
had confided to Prince George of Greece the mandate of High 
Commissioner in Crete during three years under the sovereignty 
of the Sultan, and it was announced that 'the first care of 
the High Commissioner is to be in accord with the National 
Assembly, in which all the Cretan elements will be represented, 
to institute a system of autonomous government capable of 
assuring equally the safety of persons and property and the 



476 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxxn. 

free exercise of all religious beliefs.' This proclamation made 
it evident that it was not the intention of the four Concerted 
Powers to maintain the suzerainty of the Sultan over Greece 
for any longer period than at the most the three years of the 
High Commissionership. The great Powers were slow, how- 
ever, about the adoption of a decisive policy, and in Decem- 
ber, 1901, Prince George was reappointed High Commissioner 
for three years. Prince George kept himself in close concert 
with the National Assembly, and under his presidency a res- 
olution was passed in 1901 appealing for union with Greece. 
The European Powers did not yet see their way to sanction 
and carry out this resolution, and the definite completion of the 
Greek kingdom had to be postponed. The one clear lesson 
of the crisis was that the Greeks will never give up their 
principle of nationality, and it must be admitted that there 
is not in Europe a race more capable, and on the whole better 
educated. Even the Turkish power, which has done so much 
to efface or corrupt the best qualities of the populations over 
whom it exerts its destructive sway, has never been able 
to denationalise its Greek subjects. Then, again, there is 
among the Greeks no natural craving for territorial extension, 
no passion for what we have lately taken to calling Imperialism, 
which is such a disturbing force in some European states. 
It may be asserted without fear of contradiction that if Crete 
and the other Greek populations still under the nominal suze- 
rainty of the Porte had been allowed to attach themselves 
to the modern Greek kingdom at the time of its formation, 
the new kingdom thus formed would soon have become thriv- 
ing, prosperous, and peaceful, and Europe would have been 
spared some ensanguined chapters of history. But the mis- 
fortune was that on no occasion did the influence of the great 
European Powers go far enough to ensure the recognition of 
Greek nationality and of its just claims. In the meantime it 
becomes more and more evident that Greece is living Greece 
once more, and that the long existing national aspirations of 
Greeks everywhere for a united and independent Greece can 
only end in the accomplishment of that great and honourable 
victory. 

The name of Gladstone had long been associated in noblest 
record with the history of modern Greece — that Greece whose 
land and whose literature he loved so well. It was under the 
inspiration of Gladstone that England had acted towards 
Greece in the case of the Ionian Islands so generously and 
wisely, and very soon after that chapter in Greek history 
which we have just described an end came to the career of 



CH. xxxii. GREECE, BUT LIVING GREECE ONCE MORE. 477 

that illustrious statesman. Ascension Day of 1898, May 19, 
will ever be regarded as a memorable day in English history, 
and especially in the Parliamentary life of England. On that 
day William Ewart Gladstone breathed his last. He died in 
his Hawarden home — passed away from the ever-loving and 
ever-devoted ministrations of the wife to whom he had been 
so tenderly attached, and who had always been his most 
trusted and most affectionate companion. Since his retire- 
ment from Parliamentary leadership and from Parliamentary 
work, Gladstone had not devoted his closing days to quietude 
and seclusion. Some great public question, such as that which 
was created by the sufferings of the Armenians under Turkish 
rule, roused him into active appeals on behalf of the side for 
which the claims of justice and mercy were combined. The 
closing days of his life had been darkened by intense pain, by 
nervous exhaustion, by the failure of some of his physical al- 
though none of his intellectual faculties, and the end had been 
for a long time distinctly foreseen. Still, when the inevitable 
came at last and was made known, a profound shock passed 
through all civilised nations. No statesman of the time had 
performed a greater part in history than Gladstone had done, 
or had won so high a place in the admiration and affection 
of the living world. Everyone felt that he had left no equal 
behind him. He had been a great statesman, one of the great- 
est known to modern times; he had been an orator entitled 
to rank among the highest of all ages; he had been a profound 
student of history and of literature, a lover of poetry and the 
arts, and a philanthropist of the purest order. The waj^s and 
the artifices which are common to statesmanship even of a 
high and honoured class had never been moving influences 
with him — his one impassioned desire from first to last had 
been to see the right, and, if we may quote some words of 
his own, Ho follow it whithersoever it might lead.' As a 
Parliamentary orator and debater Gladstone never had a 
superior in the splendid record of Parliamentary eloquence. 
Some of the greatest orators had to contend against the dis- 
advantages of an ineffective delivery. Others again were great 
in impassioned outbursts, but were not effective in the dry 
details of financial exposition. Others, too, though supreme 
in many rhetorical gifts, were lacking in the finer sense of 
humour. Gladstone seemed to combine in himself all the 
requisite qualities of the great orator and debater. He had 
a magnificent voice, a splendid delivery, a fluency which never 
faltered yet never failed to find the most appropriate words, 
and he showed, on occasions when the question under debate 



478 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxxn. 

gave it a fitting and telling place, a rare and happy gift of 
humour heightened with touches of sarcasm which were none 
the less successful because they never carried the sting of 
malignity with them. 

Both Houses of Parliament gave generous expression to the 
national grief for Gladstone's death, and the national feeling 
of reverence for his noble life. In the House of Lords the 
Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, delivered a speech as eloquent 
as it was evidently heartfelt, in which personal friendship was 
blended with political appreciation. The Peers who were 
present remained uncovered during the proceedings in tribute 
to the solemnity of the occasion. Lord Kimberley, as leader 
of the Opposition and as a steadfast supporter and personal 
friend of Gladstone, followed the Prime Minister, and the 
Duke of Devonshire and Lord Rosebery added their tributes 
of respect and admiration for the illustrious statesman who 
had passed away. 

The House of Commons, meeting on the day of Gladstone's 
death, had adjourned at once as a mark of respect to the mem- 
ory of its former leader. When the House met on the follow- 
ing day, Mr. Balfour, as leader of the Commons, proposed that 
an address should be sent to the Crown, praying that her 
Majesty would be graciously pleased to direct that the remains 
of the illustrious statesman just dead should be interred at the 
public charge, and that a monument should be erected in the 
Collegiate Church of St. Peter, Westminster, with an inscrip- 
tion expressive of the public admiration and attachment, and 
of the 'sense entertained of his rare and splendid gifts, and 
his devoted labours in Parliament, and in great offices of 
State.' Mr. Balfour's speech was undoubtedly among the 
very best delivered in either House of Parliament on that 
momentous occasion. Sir William Harcourt, as leader of the 
Opposition, seconded the motion, and reminded the House 
that during Mr. Gladstone's whole career he had declined all 
personal distinctions, and that it was therefore all the more 
the duty of the nation to bestow upon him the highest mark 
of honour it had yet at its disposal. Sir William Harcourt 's 
speech had in it a thrill of personal emotion which enhanced 
the impression it made upon the listening House. On the 
part of the Irish Nationalist members, Mr. John Dillon claimed 
for himself and his colleagues an especial right to join in this 
tribute to the great Englishman if only because the last and 
most glorious years of his strenuous and splendid life were 
dominated by the love he bore to the Irish nation and by his 
eager and even passionate desire to give to Ireland liberty and 



CH. xxxii. GREECE, BUT LIVING GREECE ONCE MORE. 479 

peace. On the part of the Welsh people Mr. Alfred Thomas, 
a Welsh member, bore his tribute, and the affectionate tribute 
of the Welsh people, to the great statesman whose mortal re- 
mains were soon to be laid in Westminster Abbey. The mo- 
tion was of course unanimously agreed to by the House of 
Commons. 

The natural wish of Gladstone's family that he should be 
laid to rest near to his own home at Hawarden was well known 
to many who were present during the sitting of the House, and 
to many in the world outside. The family, however, prompt- 
ly decided that the will of the Sovereign and the nation should 
be carried out, and they therefore consented to accept a pub- 
lic funeral, and the interment of the statesman's remains in 
Westminster Abbey. There were certain conditions expressed 
by Gladstone himself in his will. One of these was that wher- 
ever his body was to lie a place must be kept for the remains 
of the wife whom he had loved and by whom he had been 
loved so dearly. Another condition was that the funeral rites 
should be made as simple as possible, and that no laudatory 
inscription should be written on his tomb. The funeral cere- 
monial was carried out in distinct accordance with Gladstone's 
wishes. On May 28 both Houses of Parliament met at ten 
o'clock in the morning. The Commons, led by the Speaker 
and the Sergeant-at-Arms, passed through Westminster Hall 
and through New Palace Yard, and thus entered Westminster 
Abbey. The Peers, led by the Lord Chancellor and followed 
by the Archbishop of Canterbury, then came in to the Hall, and 
passed in procession to their places in Westminster Abbey. 
Mrs. Gladstone and her family, the Princess of Wales and the 
Duchess of York, and the representatives of many foreign 
Sovereigns and States, were already present. Mr. Gladstone's 
coffin was then set upon a plain open car at the sides of which 
moved the pall-bearers, among whom were the Duke of Rut- 
land, who, as Lord John Manners, had been Mr. Gladstone's 
colleague in the representation of Newark, the first constitu- 
ency which had sent him into the House of Commons; Lord 
Rosebery, as Mr. Gladstone's successor in the position of 
Prime Minister; Lord Salisbury and Lord Kimberley, as lead- 
ers of the House of Lords; Mr. Arthur James Balfour and Sir 
William Harcourt, as representing the House of Commons. 
The Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, deputed to repre- 
sent the Sovereign, were also among the pall-bearers. The 
coffin was met at the door of the Abbey by the Archbishop of 
Canterbury and the Dean of Westminster. The ceremonial 
of lowering the coffin into the grave was accompanied by a 



480 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxxn. 

service all the more impressive because it was made purposely 
simple and plain, and some of Mr. Gladstone's favourite hymns 
were part of the service. 

The retirement of Gladstone from public life, followed so 
soon by his death, left the Liberal party in a somewhat pe- 
culiar position, not merely because there was no man in that 
party who could claim to be Gladstone's rightful successor. 
It must happen from time to time to every great political 
party to lose a leader of supreme ability whose loss is hardly 
possible to repair. There were in that party some men of 
great and rising ability who might well be expected to become 
in time capable and successful leaders even although not pos- 
sessed of the surpassing eloquence and political genius of 
Gladstone. The difficulty in the way of the Liberal party 
just then was founded in the fact that it was somewhat di- 
vided in itself, and that the division seemed to be growing 
daily wider and more evident. There were two subjects in 
especial concerning which the difference of opinion or of feel- 
ing had lately been growing up. One was the rule of the 
Ottoman Turk and his dealings with his subject populations. 
Lord Rosebery had resigned the leadership of the Liberal 
party because he could not adopt the policy of Gladstone on 
the subject of Turkish misrule in Armenia, and could not as- 
sociate himself in any policy which might lead England into 
a European war. There were even among the Liberal party 
some who had a lingering objection to any course of definite 
hostility on the part of England towards the Ottoman power, 
partly perhaps because their minds were still occupied by the 
belief that the Turkish Empire was a sort of bulwark against 
the spread of Russian influence. Then there was the question 
of Home Rule for Ireland, and although Lord Rosebery had 
been a party to the carrying on of Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy, 
yet it was well known that he accepted the principle of Home 
Rule only in a very qualified sense, and that in later days he 
had withdrawn from it altogether. There were not a few 
English Liberals who shared Lord Rosebery's doubts and 
fears, and believed that to give to Ireland a Parliament of 
her own, such as Canada and Australia already possessed, 
would be to begin the dismemberment of the British Empire. 
Some influential Liberals had actually and formally withdrawn 
from the ranks of the Liberal party because they could not 
any longer tolerate the Home Rule scheme, and the Adminis- 
tration of Lord Salisbury now held more than one convert 
from the doctrines of the statesman whose body had recently 
been entombed in Westminster Abbey. 



CH. xxxiii. EMPLOYER AND WORKMAN. 481 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

EMPLOYER AND WORKMAN. 

For many years past both Parliamentary and public life had 
been marked by continuous efforts towards the improvement 
of the conditions under which the working-classes had to 
make their struggle for existence. There never had been 
wanting the generous and persevering efforts of individual 
philanthropists belonging to the upper classes to make the 
life of the working-man as smooth and prosperous as sympathy, 
brotherly love, and the spirit of reform could make it. But 
the working-men of these countries had of late been making 
their influence tell with systematic effect on Parliament, and 
on the public at large. Organisations of working-men began 
to be established all over Great Britain, as in many countries 
abroad, for the purpose of creating such thorough union of 
the operative classes as must make it necessary for political 
leaders and political parties to take account of their claims. 
We can most of us remember the time when a working-class 
member in the House of Commons was regarded as a sort of 
interesting curiosity, and not very long before that the con- 
ditions of our laws denied to the ordinary working-man the 
needful qualifications for a seat in the Imperial Parliament. 
That property qualification had been abolished, and the polit- 
ical franchise was extended at length to something approach- 
ing nearly to manhood suffrage, or at least to the principle of 
household suffrage, however poor the house might be, and to 
such an extension of the lodger franchise as did not preclude 
any grown man, not otherwise disqualified, from voting at an 
election, even if he did not occupy a house of his own. The 
result was that there soon came to be a very considerable 
number of working-men recognised as a Labour party in the 
representative chamber, who knew well that they had behind 
them the support of their whole order outside Parliament. 
Frequent congresses of working-men were held in England, 
resolutions concerning the policy to be pursued for the in- 
terests of the labouring classes were carefully discussed at 
these meetings, and resolutions were adopted determining the 
course to be taken in Parliament. Thus gradually it came to 
be that the House of Commons contained at least four distinct 
parties, the Liberals, the Conservatives, the Irish Nationalists, 



482 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxxiii. 

and the Labour party. The Labour members of Parliament 
have never shown themselves the votaries of socialism or 
anarchism, or as opponents of the prosperity and legitimate 
interests of the employing class, and their character and Parlia- 
mentary capacity have always told well for the common in- 
terests of the operative classes. More than one working-man 
has lately been admitted to office in the Government, in these 
later years to high office, and the working-men thus promoted 
have proved themselves fully equal to their representative 
duties. The disputes between capital and labour are already 
regarded as questions capable of satisfactory settlement by 
the decision of impartial arbitration. The remarkable prog- 
ress made of recent years towards such a condition is in great 
measure due to the intelligence, the perseverance, and, on the 
whole, the moderation of the operatives themselves and the 
men of their own order who lead them in their organised move- 
ments and represent them in the House of Commons. 

Some of the working-men who have seats in Parliament 
have won for themselves a high reputation, and are regarded 
with respect and confidence by all parties. Mr. John Burns 
was a member of the London County Council as well as of 
the House of Commons. He had received his education for 
the most part at night schools, where he studied when his 
day's work was done, and he always had a great love for read- 
ing. He was a working engineer, and as a young man he 
worked for some time as foreman engineer in a steamer on 
the Niger, where he was known among his fellow-workman as 
'coffee-pot Burns/ because of his fixed teetotal principles. 
He returned to England with some savings in his pocket, and 
he then spent six months in wandering through Continental 
Europe. John Burns took a leading part in many important 
organisations of working-men, and even in great strikes. His 
influence was twofold — it promoted perseverance in attaining 
the object sought by his class, and moderation and fair play 
in the methods by which those objects were to be attained. 
He was invited in 1892 to stand as Labour candidate for the 
constituency of Battersea, for which he was elected. In the 
House of Commons he proved himself a most effective de- 
bater. He had a powerful voice, a ready command of words, 
and he took part in a debate only when he had something to 
say which bore directly on the subject, and was suggested to 
him by his own practical knowledge. There was in John Burns 
nothing of the Anarchist, or even of the Socialist, according to 
the common interpretation of that word, though he had been 
brought more than once into collision with the recognised 



CH. xxxiii. EMPLOYER AND WORKMAN. 483 

authorities during his active career as a leader of working-men. 
He took a leading part in the great strike of the dockers which 
disturbed London in 1889. At one time much dread was felt 
lest that momentous strike might lead to disturbance in those 
parts of London where the riverside workers abound, or in 
Hyde Park and other public places where great meetings are 
held. But the crisis was brought at last to a peaceful and 
satisfactory end, and we may feel sure that the practical good 
sense and well-applied influence of John Burns did much to 
accomplish that result. Much also was due to the friendly, 
judicious, and persevering efforts made by Cardinal Manning, 
Sir John Lubbock, and others who intervened in the dispute 
to secure a full hearing for the case of the strikers. The part 
taken by John Burns in the dispute was well calculated to 
raise his character in the estimation of the capitalist as well 
as in that of the labourer. 

It soon became recognised as a settled condition in the 
effective working of the British Constitution that a certain 
number of men should be elected to the House of Commons 
to represent the views and claims of the working-classes on all 
subjects connected with the manufacturing and trading in- 
terests of the Empire. 

Another distinguished representative of the working- classes 
in the House was Mr. Thomas Burt, elected as member for 
Morpeth as long ago as the General Election of 1874, by 
an overwhelming majority over the Conservative candidate. 
Thomas Burt, at the age of ten, began life as a worker in the 
coal-pits of Northumberland, where his father was also a 
worker. During his early years there was no system of na- 
tional education in England, and the youth born to poverty 
who desired education must either educate himself or be con- 
tent to depend on some form of charitable help. Thomas 
Burt early developed a love and a capacity for learning, and 
he soon distinguished himself among his fellows, and held 
offices in various associations formed by the miners for their 
own benefit. It was thus that he became so popular among 
the working-classes in the North as to justify their calling on 
him to become a candidate for the representation of Morpeth. 
His whole Parliamentary career has been thoroughly successful 
in the sense which we may assume to be most congenial with 
his own ambition. Mr. Burt became president of many im- 
portant organisations for the interests of the miners, and pre- 
sided over many international conferences held in Continental 
cities. He was one of the delegates from Great Britain to an 
important International Labour Conference in Berlin in the 



484 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxxiii. 

spring of 1890. Mr. Gladstone, who had always a quick eye 
for rising capacity, had long recognised the ability of Mr. 
Burt, and in 1892 offered him the position of Parliamentary 
Secretary to the Board of Trade, which Mr. Burt accepted 
and retained until the General Election of 1895, when the 
Liberals were defeated and the Conservatives came into power. 
Mr. Burt has shown distinct capacity as a writer, and articles 
by him have appeared in several of our leading reviews. 

Another working-man in Parliament who held office in a 
Liberal Government is Mr. Henry Broadhurst, the son of a 
stone-mason, who received his education in a small village 
school. During much of his early life he worked as a stone- 
mason, but he soon showed his capacity for public speaking 
and organisation, and acted as secretary to more than one 
society established in the interests of Labour. He served on 
Royal Commissions on 'The Housing of the Working-Classes, 
on 'Reformatories and Industrial Schools/ and others. In 
1880 he first entered the House of Commons as member for 
Stoke-upon-Trent. In 1886 he received from Mr. Gladstone 
the office of Under-Secretary of State for the Home Depart- 
ment, and he has always been recognised in the House as one 
of the most capable advocates of the cause of Labour. 

There are other working-men in Parliament who have ren- 
dered valuable service there to every cause they felt con- 
scientiously bound to advocate, and the representation of 
Labour is now one of the recognised constituent elements of 
the House of Commons. 

Much of the session of 1897 was occupied with the discus- 
sion of the Workmen's Compensation for Accident Act, an 
Act entitling working-men to compensation for personal in- 
juries caused by accidents during their working hours, acci- 
dents which were not to be attributed to any negligence or 
other fault on the part of the sufferers themselves. Measures 
for this purpose had been familiar to the House for several 
previous years. A Bill was brought in and passed, for seven 
years as a sort of experiment, in 1880. The Bill was, however, 
very limited in its scope, and much qualified in its application 
to the grievance of which working-men complained. It ap- 
pears to have had no effect in protecting the operatives from, 
or in securing them compensation for, injuries inflicted on 
them by accidents which better care on the part of the em- 
ployers might have foreseen and prevented. A new Act hav- 
ing the same object was passed in 1888, which seems also to 
have been almost altogether unsatisfactory. In the early part 
of the session of 1893 yet another measure was introduced, 



CH. xxxiii. EMPLOYER AND WORKMAN. 485 

but this, too, came to nothing. The main dispute over the 
provisions of the Bill arose on the introduction of a clause 
enabling workmen and their employers to contract themselves 
out of the measure by mutual agreement. This clause was 
strongly opposed in the House of Commons on the ground 
that if it were passed into legislation, it would enable any 
employers to make it a condition preliminary to employing 
the workman that he must agree to contract himself out of 
the application of the measure. The Parliamentary advocates 
of the working-man argued that the operatives would often 
have to choose between throwing away the protection offered 
by the measure and obtaining no employment, for the reason 
that there would at all times be employers who would take 
good care to escape by such means from the responsibilities 
imposed by the new measure. The Commons finally rejected 
the disputed clause, but when the Bill went up to the Lords, 
the clause was maintained in its original form. The whole 
measure was then withdrawn by the Liberal Administration. 
Another Bill for the same general purpose was brought in by 
the Government of Lord Salisbury and the Conservatives in 
the session of 1897. During its discussions in Committee there 
were some new clauses introduced which led to a long de- 
bate. One of these was a clause, moved by the Home Secre- 
tary, which proposed to give to any workman injured by the 
act or neglect of an outsider the right to decide for himself 
whether he would take proceedings against the outsider under 
the common law of the country, or proceed directly against 
his employer under the provisions of the new measure. This 
clause was opposed, evidently in the interest of the employers, 
on the ground that it was not fair or reasonable to make the 
employer liable for the act or neglect of one over whom he 
had no direct control. The new clause had the support of the 
Opposition, and it was finally passed by a large majority, the 
minority being made up for the most part of those who sup- 
ported the interests of the employers. The Government made 
or supported some concessions to the employers, but they were 
to all appearance sincerely anxious that as much as possible 
should be done to recognise the just claims of the operatives. 
The majority of the capitalists and the employers of labour 
were on the Government's side, and if the Administration did 
not take their demands into account, might have succeeded in 
throwing out the Bill. One almost unavoidable result of this 
was that the Bill had to be left without some of the most im- 
portant improvements which would have to be made if the 
measure were to be anything like a final settlement of the 



486 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxxiii. 

rival claims of employers and employed. The Bill passed its 
third reading in the Commons, and then went up to the Lords. 
The Marquis of Londonderry, who was habitually a supporter 
of Conservative Governments, who had held, and was again 
to hold, office under a Conservative Prime Minister, raised 
strong objection to some parts of the measure, although he 
did not directly oppose it. The measure received anything 
but enthusiastic support from Lord Ripon, Lord Dunraven, 
and Lord Kimberley. These Peers all declined to oppose the 
Bill for the plain reason that whatever its deficiencies, it was 
moving in the right direction, and was better than nothing. 
But they were clearly of opinion that sooner or later its prin- 
ciple would have to be broadly extended and made to apply 
to all industrial occupations. The speech of the Prime Min- 
ister, Lord Salisbury, was especially effective in combating the 
arguments of those among his own party who believed that 
the measure went too far in sustaining the operatives at the 
expense of the employers, and in showing how arguments of 
the same kind had been used to prevent the passing of several 
great measures of reform which had since been accepted by 
the whole country, and had worked with the happiest effect. 
But Lord Salisbury was very careful not to commit himself 
to a large and liberal extension of that principle, and not to 
make anything like a full concession to the demands set up 
in the interests of the operative class. Under such conditions 
it was not likely that a final measure could then be passed 
through the House of Commons where the Conservative Gov- 
ernment had a large majority, and would have had little 
chance indeed of being accepted by the House of Lords. The 
Government measure was passed through both Houses, and 
received the Royal assent on August 5, 1897. It was but a 
poor compromise between the claims of the operatives and the 
supposed interests of the employers, and could not possibly 
be regarded as a final settlement. Still, it was something to 
have got even thus far with a strong Conservative Govern- 
ment in office, and the final arrangement was obviously left 
for future legislation. The working-men were compelled to 
make further efforts in order to carry the needed reform to 
a complete success. 



CH. xxxiv. THE FAR EAST. 487 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE FAR EAST. 

From long before the days of Alexander the Great until long 
after the days of Napoleon Bonaparte, the ambition to hold 
the gorgeous East in fee has been portentous of disturbance 
and trouble to Europe. Once again an outburst of such dis- 
turbance was making its coming manifest. A new claimant 
for influence and sovereignty in the East was appearing, and 
new rivals from the West were showing their resolve to con- 
tend for Eastern territory. Japan had suddenly shaken off 
the traditions of ages and faced the world with a lately ac- 
quired mastery of all the Old World's mechanisms and meth- 
ods in the arts of war as well as of peace. Until 1867 Japan 
was a feudal nation living for itself, and content with the man- 
ners, customs, and knowledge of its own past. In 1867 and 
1868 feudalism was overthrown in a civil war, and the victori- 
ous party of progress completely reversed the old policy of 
aloofness, and grasped with both hands at all it could gather 
of European civilisation and European learning. 

Changes were also taking place in Europe which opened 
up new possibilities and new perils for the Eastern question. 
Russia had now become in a certain sense an Oriental Power, 
and had plainly no intention of remaining content with such 
territory as she had already acquired. Germany, as a great 
military power, did not intend to allow the East to be recast 
and remoulded without having some share in the arrangements 
and advantages of such a transformation. The question of 
frontier lines was becoming with every year a subject of 
greater difficulty and of more animated dispute. The policy 
of England was in the minds of most of her statesmen merely 
to guard and hold what she already possessed ; but the minds 
of others among her political leaders were filled with the creed 
of Imperialism — the mission of England to spread her Empire 
to an unlimited extent. 

The attention of the world began to be drawn directly tow- 
ards the peninsula of Corea in Eastern Asia, a region long 
tributary to China, and from which all foreigners were shut 
out until 1882. It was a region of almost perpetual disturb- 
ance, and there were frequent risings against the Sovereign 

of Corea, and frequent interventions on the part of Japan, 
32 



488 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxxiv. 

who was greatly interested in the promotion of peace and 
order in Corea. The general impression was that Japan was 
not moved merely by a beneficent design to establish tran- 
quillity and good government there, but by the wish to make 
Corea a tributary of Japan. China asserted once again her 
sovereign rights over Corea, and there were several European 
interventions and mediations, England, among other Powers, 
asserting in the interest of peace and for the sake of her com- 
merce in the East her claim to have a station in the peninsula. 
The Coreans, impatient of Chinese sovereignty, entered into a 
sort of alliance with Japan, the result being a treaty of alliance 
between Japan and Corea and a war with China. The Chinese 
got the worst of it, and Port Arthur, an important naval ar- 
senal, was taken by the Japanese in 1894. Peace was made 
at last under conditions which still recognised the indepen- 
dence of Corea, but allowed the Japanese to retain the places 
they had captured. Against this Russia, Germany, and France 
protested, on the ground that the practical annexation of 
Corean territory by the Japanese was a danger to foreign com- 
merce and to the interests of peace. Finally a treaty was made 
between Russia and Japan, providing for the maintenance of 
Corea's independence under the combined protection of these 
two Powers; but this did not give much satisfaction to the rest 
of the world. England and Japan afterwards came to an ar- 
rangement for the maintenance of Corea's independence, with 
the concession of certain stations to each of these Powers, 
while still recognising Corea as an independent State. Corea 
was, however, destined to be the battle-ground of rival and 
foreign claims. When any concession was made to one for- 
eign State, each of the other States regarded its own claims 
as damaged by such a preference, and insisted on some im- 
mediate reparation. It was soon evident that the struggle 
for supremacy must be a trial of strength between Russia and 
Japan. The final attempt to bring the claims of these two 
Powers to a settlement led to a war with which this history 
has not to deal. The Japanese had grown rapidly in all the 
arts characteristic of Western civilisation, and they had made 
it evident that their destiny, as well as their desire, was to 
become one of the great States of the modern world. Every 
step in their progress marked Japan out more decisively as 
Russia's rival in the East; while Russia's practical interests 
along with her desire for conquest made her inevitably an 
enemy to the supremacy of Japan, and already the struggle 
for the ownership of Corea had been given over to the eager 
hands of Russia and Japan. China had not, up to this time, 



CH. xxxiv. THE FAR EAST. 489 

played an important part in the life of the Eastern Hemisphere, 
but her negative influence in acting as a barrier between this 
or that rising Power had been highly useful, though with no 
such intention on her part, in maintaining the interests of 
peace. An impression now prevailed throughout the West 
that the Chinese Empire was breaking up, was ceasing to be 
of any use for the preservation of peace, and that her condition 
held out irresistible temptations to the ambition of more ris- 
ing Powers. England, with her great Indian Empire, must 
ever be deeply interested in any changes which might affect 
the conditions of Asiatic States. There were meanwhile the 
usual troubles to the English Government about the arrange- 
ments which had to be made, unmade, and remade concern- 
ing the frontier lines of their Indian and other Eastern territory 
in order to secure their inhabitants against the incursions of 
native tribes. Much was heard about the efforts of the 'Mad 
Mullah/ as he was called, to disturb the British settlements, 
and to compel some of the native rulers to join him in his 
enterprises. The Mad Mullah, whose madness appeared to 
have some method in it, actually gave a native ruler his choice 
between joining him in his invasions of British territory or 
being himself invaded and conquered. The British Command- 
er-in-Chief had to send troops to sustain the native ruler, and 
some encounters, more or less serious, occurred. 

At the close of the year 1898 an important change took 
place in the Government of India. Lord Elgin, the Viceroy, 
retired from office at the end of his five years' term. Lord 
Elgin belonged to a family which had distinguished itself much 
in the rule of India and in many other fields. He had shown 
ability and energy in dealing with many serious troubles during 
his Viceroyalty. There was a frontier war; there had been a 
famine; and in the early part of 1898 a new attack of plague 
made its appearance in Bombay. The mortality from this 
malady was more than 100,000 — 28,000 in Bombay, and over 
70,000 in the Presidency and Sind. The sanitary measures 
which the authorities considered necessary to prevent the 
spread of the disease were opposed in many cases by the 
natives, and serious riots ensued, in which many were killed 
or injured. The nurses and others who carried out the sani- 
tary measures had to be guarded by troops. After the riots 
had been suppressed, the Bombay Legislative Council and 
other authorities took measures to prevent the recurrence of 
the plague by the demolition and rebuilding of many parts of 
the native quarters, and by the reclaiming of large seashore 
districts. There was plague also in Calcutta, which also 



49Q A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxxiv. 

caused riots, but the mortality there was not so great as at 
Bombay. A great extension of the Indian railway system 
was made during Lord Elgin's tenure of office, and a report 
issued with the authority of the Government stated that there 
had been a net increase of nearly eight hundred miles of line 
in the closing year of his administration. 

Lord Elgin's successor as Viceroy was Lord Curzon of Kedles- 
ton, who before his appointment was well known in England 
as George Nathaniel Curzon. He was born at Kedleston 
Hall in Derbyshire; he won many distinctions at Oxford, 
and in 1885 he became assistant private secretary to the Mar- 
quis of Salisbury. In politics he was a strong Conservative. 
In 1885 he contested South Derbyshire without success, but 
in the following year he was returned for the Southport di- 
vision of Lancashire in a contest with a supporter of Mr. 
Gladstone. Mr. Curzon had been a great traveller before 
entering political life, had shown a deep interest in Eastern 
countries and Eastern literature. He continued his travels 
and studies after his election to the House of Commons, and 
wrote books which illustrated his wide Asiatic experience and 
observation. He took part very often in the debates in the 
House, and as a speaker was always ready, fluent, and often 
really impressive. He was Under-Secretary for India from 
1891 to 1892, and when in 1895 Lord Salisbury formed the 
Administration which lasted to the end of his life, Mr. Curzon 
was appointed Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. When 
in 1899 the announcement was made of his appointment to 
the important position of Viceroy of India at the age of thirty- 
seven, the feeling of many inside and outside Parliament was 
that they had never thought of him as a likely man for so 
difficult and so responsible a position. From the first Lord 
Curzon showed himself determined to carry out that forward 
policy which he had previously advocated in some of his 
writings. Lord Curzon had of his own choice accepted an 
Irish and not an English Peerage, and the general impression 
was that he had made this choice because he was unwilling to 
separate himself for ever from that House of Commons which 
he liked so well, and in which he had been so popular. 

The period had set in when what were called ' spheres of 
interest and spheres of influence' began to be adopted by 
Western statecraft as the rightful claim which civilised Powers 
might press upon Asiatic governments and populations. The 
civilised Powers were nearly all of them great trading Powers, 
and it was held to be clearly for the good of the whole world 
that legitimate and healthful trade and commerce might have 



CH. Jixxiv. THE FAR EAST. 491 

the door kept open for them in every Asiatic State. The 
landing of trading ships is not warlike invasion; commerce is 
not conquest. Why should not England be guaranteed se- 
cure landing-places on the shores of such countries as China, 
which were to be hers merely in the trading sense, and could 
give her no claims to any territorial jurisdiction outside the 
limits of the port itself? Thus would be offered the open door 
for the introduction of all manner of foreign products, and 
thus might be established the copartnership of the world in 
general in the benefits enjoyed by each civilised nation. Such 
an open door was the privilege claimed by Russia when she 
sought for a lease of certain ports and seacoast places belong- 
ing to the Chinese Empire; claimed also by Germany and by 
Japan, and then by England. Nothing could have seemed 
more fair and satisfactory than this arrangement; but when 
the principle came to be worked out in fact, the results did 
not prove so harmonious and promising as might have been 
expected. The privileged States began to be jealous of each 
other, and there grew up among them a feeling of suspicion 
that the termination of the lease was not likely to be reached 
by certain of these States within any time that human fore- 
sight could anticipate. What certainty was there that Russia 
and Japan, and England and Germany would be found willing 
to give up the tenure when the lease was out or that China 
would be enabled to force her claim for the resumption of 
ownership if she should feel inclined to do so ? It was evident 
that China in her decaying and dissolving condition was show- 
ing herself ready to make any temporary concessions demand- 
ed of her by any European Power having strength enough to 
render her demands formidable. At one time China much 
wanted some help in order to make the final payment of her 
Japanese war debt, and the British Government felt inclined 
to help her through her difficulty if adequate consideration 
were given as a recompense. Lord Salisbury proposed that 
if the British Government were to undertake the negotiations 
for a loan of sixteen millions to China, the Chinese Emperor 
should give England a treaty port as a condition for the guar- 
antee of the loan. But it was found that Russia was doing 
all she could to interfere with this arrangement, and the re- 
sult was that England's proposal came, for the time, to noth- 
ing. Then set in fresh negotiations, and at last the required 
loan was supplied by a combination of English and German 
syndicates, in which Japan also took part. Russia had mean- 
time succeeded in getting some advantage, for it was soon an- 
nounced that the Chinese garrison had been withdrawn from 



492 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. XXXIV. 

Port Arthur and another port; that the Russian flag was dis- 
played at both those stations; that 2,000 Russian troops had 
been landed at Port Arthur, and that there were nine Russian 
warships guarding the conceded ports. The British Govern- 
ment could not submit to all this without having something to 
show for the help she had given to China, and the Chinese 
authorities therefore conceded to England a lease for ninety- 
nine years of the port of Wei-hai-Wei, and here the British 
flag was soon displayed by the English naval commander. 
England also obtained the right to extend her Eastern rail- 
way system through certain parts of the territory then under 
discussion. The meaning of all these movements plainly was 
that China had come to be regarded everywhere as .an Empire 
far too vast for her own power of maintenance, and that 
several European States as well as Japan were anxious to se- 
cure for themselves some spheres of interest and of influence 
before the break up of China should throw all into confusion. 

The attention of the world came now to be absorbed by 
events disturbing the Government of China itself. The Dow- 
ager Empress of China appears to have been a woman of de- 
cided ability and much ambition, with a complete reliance on 
herself and an ample estimate of her qualities for personal rule 
— a sort of Chinese reproduction of England's Queen Eliza- 
beth or of Russia's Catherine; and for a while it seemed as 
if she were destined to play an important part in the history 
of her vast country. When her son succeeded to the throne 
the Dowager acted for some time as a sort of regent during 
his long minority. An Empress had made herself powerful 
more than once during former days in China, and this Em- 
press had ambition and self-confidence enough to stimulate her 
towards an effort to seize the first opportunity for becoming 
really the sovereign power. The Government of the country 
had always been conducted by a system of provincial councils, 
but the throne did its best to exercise in the end a supreme 
jurisdiction, and the Empress was not willing to lose her hold 
of any supremacy which might belong to her through her son. 

At this time a strong party was arising throughout China 
with the object of preventing that immigration of foreigners, 
more especially of Europeans, which had been so much in- 
creased by the concessions made to Russia, England, Ger- 
many, and to the United States. This agitation aroused into 
feverish emotion the characteristic and ancestral hatred of the 
Chinese in general to the policy of the open door. A society 
or organisation known by the name of 'The Boxers' had set 
itself against all that modern policy which was displayed in the 



CH. xxxiv. THE FAR EAST. 493 

encouragement of foreigners to settle and hold land and prop- 
erty in China. The name of the Boxers, which became so 
familiar at the time to the Press and the public of all English- 
speaking countries, was a colloquial British rendering of the 
title, 'The Righteous Harmony Fists/ which the secret anti- 
foreign organisation had conferred upon itself. 

The Boxers began to show their hatred of foreigners by 
murderous outrages on strangers, and on natives who were 
supposed to favour the policy which was trying to break up 
what the Boxers believed to be the religious sacredness of 
China's ancient principle of absolute reservation from the out- 
er world. There were many internal troubles in China at the 
time. There was a widespread failure in the growth of crops, 
and in many parts of the country there was absolute famine. 
The Boxers declared that all these evils had come from the 
immigration of strangers sanctioned by the ruling Powers. 
It was even asserted that the foreigners had taken to the 
poisoning of wells in China, and these statements were readily 
believed by vast numbers of the Chinese. Great riots were 
set on foot in the capital city and in many parts of the Empire, 
and there were massacres of missionaries and their families 
and of native Chinese who had become or were supposed to 
have become Christians. The Dowager Empress appeared 
at first to be thoroughly opposed to the policy of the Boxers, 
but as that policy grew stronger she was understood to have 
come into sympathy with it, and even when in deference to 
the protests of English and other foreign governments the 
Chinese authorities issued an Imperial decree condemning the 
society, it was well understood that the Empress Dowager 
would take care that nothing should come of it. The Boxers 
issued proclamations in which they declared that 'foreign 
devils ' were invading the country with the doctrines of Chris- 
tianity, and that converts to the Catholic and Protestant 
faiths were tolerated and becoming numerous; that telegraphs 
had been brought into the country, and that foreign cannons 
and rifles were manufactured there, but that China still re- 
garded the foreigners as barbarians upon whom Heaven frown- 
ed, and that it was the duty of all true Chinese to take meas- 
ures that the foreigners should be extirpated in order that 
the purposes of Heaven should be carried out. The Ameri- 
can missionary buildings near Pekin were attacked and burned, 
and some eighty-five native Christian converts were put to 
death. At last the anti-foreign movement broke out into 
something like actual war. Chinese forts fired on the ships 
of the allied squadron, and the allied squadron — composed 



4t>4 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. XXXIV. 

of English, Russian, German, French, and Japanese warships 
— had nothing for it but to open a cannonade, thus after an 
engagement of some hours to reduce the forts to silence, and 
then to send ashore force enough to capture and hold the 
forts. A little army of some 2,500 men, made up from all 
the foreign nationalities, and commanded by the British Ad- 
miral Seymour, which was sent to the relief of Pekin, met 
with much opposition, and had to be strengthened by suc- 
cessive reinforcements to enable it to render some real service 
in the strange sort of civil war which was now going on. The 
Chinese Government kept up for a time the appearance of 
being hostile to the Boxers, and anxious to protect the allied 
forces. But it began to be generally believed that the sym- 
pathy of the Empress Dowager and of many other great 
Chinese personages were secretly given to the anti-foreign 
movement. On June 11, M. Sugiyama, the Chancellor of the 
Japanese Legation, being unarmed and alone in one of the 
streets of Pekin, was attacked and put to death by the soldiers 
of the Chinese General Tung. Railways and locomotives were 
destroyed, and the telegraph wires cut. The Chinese authori- 
ties sent a deputation to wait upon the British Minister and 
make declarations of China's sincere friendship, with assur- 
ances that all disturbance had been created by the action of 
fanatical mobs from outside the city, and with the protesta- 
tion that China regarded it as her sacred duty to protect the 
members of all foreign legations, whom she looked upon as her 
guests. The attacks, however, on foreign buildings, on for- 
eign property of whatever kind, and on the foreigners them- 
selves, went on just as before. The Boxers were impartial in 
their destruction; they dealt with Protestant and Catholic 
churches, and with the residences of the various foreign Lega- 
tions in the same way. Rescue parties were sent out by the 
allied forces of the foreigners, one of which succeeded in carry- 
ing away more than 1,200 women and children belonging to 
foreigners settled in Pekin, and placing them for safety in 
grounds near to the British Legation. 

The Chinese authorities then announced to the foreign Min- 
isters that the allied fleet had captured the Taku forts on the 
17th, and that this act could not be regarded otherwise than 
as a declaration of war, and they informed the foreign Minis- 
ters that they must leave the capital, Pekin, for Tien-tsin, as 
otherwise the safety of their lives could not be assured. Sud- 
denly the attention of the whole world was aroused by the 
murder of the German Minister, Baron Von Ketteler, as he 
was passing along one of the streets in the open day accom- 



CH. xxxiv. THE FAR EAST. 495 

panied by his secretary. The crime was committed by a civil 
officer of the Chinese Government, wearing a full uniform, 
with a mandarin's button and feather in his hat, who fired a 
shot from his rifle which killed the German Minister, and then 
fired at the secretary, who was wounded, but was fortunate 
enough to escape in the confusion and tumult which followed. 
Then all efforts at arrangement between the foreign Minis- 
ters and the Chinese authorities came to an end. The foreign 
diplomatists knew that they were regarded as mere enemies, 
and that they had nothing for it but to defend themselves in 
the best way they could against the enemy who surrounded 
them on all sides. How overwhelmingly the odds were against 
them will be clearly understood when it is mentioned that the 
whole strength of the guards under the control of the foreign 
diplomatists consisted of eighteen officers and 389 m6n. Many 
of the buildings belonging to the foreign Legations were ab- 
solutely unsuited to anything like defence against a serious 
assault by large numbers, and they had to be abandoned. 
The British Legation, made up of a number of strong build- 
ings and protected enclosures, became the central position for 
the stand made by the threatened foreigners. The foreign 
Ministers with their families and officials, and the Christian 
missionaries and the Customs staff, had to be crowded within 
the high walls of the British Legation. During nearly two 
months this beleaguered encampment struggled with unflinch- 
ing heroism against the assaults of the besiegers, who were not 
made up merely of the rabble of Boxers, but were reinforced 
by the disciplined Chinese soldiers of one of the native Princes. 
The Chinese Government did not come forward openly as 
leaders of the siege, but made no effort to interfere with the 
besiegers, and it is certain that the besiegers were well sup- 
plied with Krupp guns and all the most modern artillery, 
which could hardly have been brought into the service of the 
Boxers if any effort had been made by the Chinese authorities 
to interfere with the fanatical work of destruction. It would 
be impossible to describe in words the sensation which was 
created all throughout Europe as the news of this honking 
struggle came in from day to day. It was believed all over 
Europe for several days that the British enclosure in Pekin 
had been absolutely destroyed, and that the diplomatists and 
their families and all those to whom they were giving shelter 
had been done to death. The English Government resolved 
that an expedition of some kind must be sent to march upon 
Pekin in order to save all that could be saved, and to restore 
something like order. The idea of Lord Salisbury and his col- 



496 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxxiv. 

leagues was that Japan from her nearness to the scene was the 
foreign Power which Could best hope for success in a prompt 
effort to save the Legations in Pekin, and that Great Britain 
should contribute towards the expedition all the forces which 
she had near to Pekin, and whatever financial help might be 
required. There was some delay in carrying out this proposal. 
Russia at first did not see her way to follow the lead of Japan, 
while Germany seemed for a while uncertain as to the pos- 
sibility of securing concerted action among so many Powers. 
But if any rescue were to take place the rescuers must set 
about their work at once, and the expedition was got under 
way and started from Tien-tsin on August 4, 1900. The forces 
numbered 10,000 Japanese, with fifty-four guns; 4,000 Rus- 
sians, with sixteen guns; 3,000 British, with twelve guns; 2,000 
Americans, with six guns; 800 French, with twelve small guns; 
200 Germans, and about 100 Austrians and Italians — the whole 
consisting of some 20,100 men. The expedition was persist- 
ently opposed in its march to Pekin by Chinese troops, who 
appeared to be well supplied with artillery, and who had the 
advantage of fighting behind entrenchments. The allied forces 
had to fight their way from position to position, with con- 
siderable loss, and the soldiers suffered severely from the in- 
tense heat. On August 12 the Allies captured Tung-chau, 
distant only about thirteen miles from Pekin. The advance 
from that point was made in four parallel columns. The Jap- 
anese were earliest in arriving at Pekin, and might have en- 
tered at once through its eastern gate, but that they were 
stopped by a large force of Chinese sharpshooters, who kept 
up a severe fire from the city wall. It was therefore the good 
fortune of the British column to be the first to enter the city 
from the south side through the Tung-fuen Gate. The other 
columns of the Allies made their way into the city soon after 
from different points. On August 26 the city was surrendered, 
and a detachment of the combined troops marched through 
the capital in order to proclaim to the inhabitants and to the 
world that the victory of the Allies had been accomplished. 
Then began the negotiations for peace. The happy discovery 
was now made that the reported massacre of those within the 
British enclosures was but one of the inevitable rumours of the 
worst which are characteristic events of every such struggle. 
The Legation had been able to hold out to the last, and now 
the victorious forces of the Allies were in a position to insure 
their further safety and to receive their welcome. The terms 
of peace which the allied forces offered to China provided for 
the razing of certain forts, including the Taku Fort, which had 



CH. xxxiv. THE FAR EAST. 497 

been used for the work of destruction by the Chinese during 
the recent war and in former disturbances; the military oc- 
cupation of points between Pekin and the sea, the Viceroys to 
be held accountable for any future Boxer and other anti-for- 
eign outbreaks, or for any violation of treaties; the revision 
of commercial arrangements between China and the foreign 
Powers, and that a Chinese Imperial Prince should be sent to 
Berlin to convey the expression of the Chinese Government's 
regret for the murder of the German Minister. Another con- 
dition was the infliction of severe punishment on certain 
Chinese Princes and on others of high rank who should be 
convicted of having directed or encouraged the attacks upon 
foreigners. Some reforms in the methods of Chinese govern- 
ment were also insisted on, as part of the conditions of peace. 
Here this dismal story may be said to have come to an end 
— at least, so far as this history is concerned. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW. 

The responsibilities of England had been growing during this 
time in Egypt as well as in China. There had not been for 
several generations many successive months during which the 
public attention of England was not alarmed or at least 
aroused by sudden and disturbing events in Egypt. On Sep- 
tember 2, 1898, another chapter in the long historj'- of Eng- 
land's Egyptian progress was brought to a close by the battle 
of Omdurman. That battle was fought between the com- 
bined British and. Egyptian troops, under the command of 
Sir Herbert Kitchener, and the forces of the Dervishes, who 
were fighting for the native rulers of Egypt. Early in the 
year Sir Herbert Kitchener, the keenest observer of events 
within his sphere, believed he had good reason to know that 
the Dervishes were cautiously but steadily making prepara- 
tions for a disturbing movement at some moment which might 
seem opportune to them. The Dervishes of our recent days 
acquired for the name of their order a significance which in 
its earlier history it was never meant to express. The Persian 
word meant nothing more than one of those who in all coun- 
tries are considered poor. But in the history of all political 
struggles we find the simplest and plainest names invested 
with a meaning having nothing to do with its original purpose. 



498 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch xxxv. 

During the Revolt of the Netherlands a gallant band of fight- 
ers on the side of freedom were known as 'The Beggars,' 
whose ranks were not composed altogether of mendicants. 
'The Camisards' of another date and region were not excep- 
tional in their wearing of shirts. In the same way the Der- 
vishes of our later Egyptian campaigns were not living types 
of poverty and sanctity. Sir Herbert Kitchener took early 
notice of their plans and movements. He sent for large rein- 
forcements from Cairo, and before many weeks he had organ- 
ised a powerful military force on the banks of the Nile. In 
the early days of April, 1898, this force attacked the entrenched 
camp of the Dervishes, who are described in all accounts of 
the battle as numbering nearly 10,000 men. Kitchener's army, 
according to the report received by the British authorities, 
killed at least 3,000 Dervishes, captured 3,000 more, and made 
the leader, Mahmoud, a prisoner. This stimulated Sir Her- 
bert Kitchener to make a fresh advance, and to prepare for 
the final victory. His determination was to make Khartoum, 
the capital of Nubia, at the confluence of the Blue and White 
Nile, the point of his final attack. The forces of the Khalifa 
numbered more than 60,000 at that point, and were, it was 
said, well supplied with artillery. The English troops only 
numbered some 23,000 men. At Omdurman the great battle 
took place. The Dervishes came out to encounter the British 
troops, but after more than one long and desperate fight the 
skill and tactics of the British, with an unfailing discipline and 
unbroken courage, accomplished a complete success over their 
enemies. At last as many of the Dervishes as were left of 
that force, which had fought for a long time with splendid 
bravery, underwent a complete defeat, and had to disperse, 
and the flight soon became an utter rout. Sir Herbert Kitch- 
ener entered Omdurman a triumphant conqueror, and on 
the Sunday following, September 4, a thanksgiving service 
was held within Khartoum, and the British and the Egyptian 
flag were displayed side by side over the shattered citadel 
where Gordon had closed his gallant and devoted life. The 
whole struggle was so well conducted by the British commander 
that the losses were comparatively few. It is characteristic 
of modern warfare that among those killed on the British side 
was Mr. Hubert Howard, war correspondent of the Times 
newspaper. This victory brought with it throughout the 
British Empire a sense of peculiar satisfaction, because it was 
felt that Gordon had at last been avenged, and that the place 
which had seen his murder had now become the scene of the 
vengeance inflicted for that murder. After the victory at 



CH. xxxv. THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW. 499 

Khartoum there were some eloquent sentences written about 
the gratitude which the soul of Gordon might be supposed 
to feel at this homage offered to him by his fellow-country- 
men. Some of us may be excused if, judging by what we 
know concerning Gordon, we are inclined to doubt whether 
such a soul as his was likely to be propitiated by such a sac- 
rifice. When the struggle with the Dervishes was thus 
brought to an end, Sir Herbert Kitchener returned to Eng- 
land, where he was received with a national welcome in pro- 
portion to the services he had rendered, his marvellous fore- 
sight, his patient organisation of details, and the efforts he 
had always made that there should be as little waste of hu- 
man life on either side as was possible. He received from the 
Queen the title of Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, and even 
those of his countrymen who had felt least sympathy with 
the policy of conquest in Egypt freely admitted that the man- 
ner in which he had done the work amply deserved such rec- 
ognition from his Sovereign. Lord Kitchener believed that 
he had still some work to do in connection with Khartoum 
and its memories, and he made use of the first opportunity 
offered to him in accomplishing this characteristic task. He 
was entertained at a banquet by the Lord Maj^or of London, 
and presented there with the freedom of the City and a sword 
of honour. Lord Kitchener then and there invited the Brit- 
ish public to raise a sum of 100,000L to found and to endow 
a college for the education of Egyptians and Soudanese, to be 
built at Khartoum as an appropriate memorial of Gordon. 
The proposal met with an enthusiastic welcome, and when 
Lord Kitchener returned to Egypt he was able to bear with 
him the whole of the sum needed. Lord Kitchener may be 
congratulated on having raised the noblest and the most ap- 
propriate monument to the memory of the hero Gordon on 
that very ground which Lord Kitchener had made available 
for the purpose. This was indeed just the sort of revenge 
which would have been most in sympathy with the heart of 
Gordon himself. 

The once famous 'Fashoda incident' in 1898 belongs to this 
part of our narrative. Fashoda marks a point on the line in 
the Egyptian Soudan farther south than Omdurman and 
Khartoum. In one of the expeditions along the Nile during 
the campaign, Lord Kitchener — as he became later — was made 
aware that some white men, to all appearance a military force, 
were in occupation of Fashoda, and that the French flag was 
flying there. Lord Kitchener acted with his usual prompti- 
tude. From the information he received he had come to the 



500 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxxv. 

conclusion that the white men constituted a force under the 
command of the French officer, Major Marchand, from the 
French Congo region. Major Marchand had been put at the 
head of an exploring enterprise by the French Government, 
and was probably on the lookout for new realms which the 
French Republic could conquer and annex. There appears 
to have been a sort of unwritten international law, or under- 
standing, that European and other States were free to send 
expeditions of this kind exploring through the unsettled and 
unannexed regions of Egypt. If these came upon some terri- 
tory which seemed to suit their purposes, and was not under 
the dominion of any other European State, it would be free 
to them to make it their own if it were a desert, or if the 
dwellers on its soil, supposing it to be inhabited, did not make 
any objection to the annexation, or proved unable to maintain 
their objection by force of arms. Fashoda formed some of the 
territory which England, acting as the copartner of the Egyp- 
tian ruler, regarded as part of her dominion, and under the 
protection of the British and the Egyptian flag. Lord Kitch- 
ener at once went up the Nile with a flotilla of gun-boats 
and a military force. He found Major Marchand in occupa- 
tion of Fashoda, and the French flag floating there. He in- 
formed Major Marchand that that part of the world was 
strictly Egyptian and under British protection, and he polite- 
ly invited Major Marchand to take himself, his force, and his 
flag into some unclaimed region. Major Marchand stated that 
the French force and the French flag were there by the orders 
of the French Government, and that he could not withdraw 
without authority from Paris. The discussions were con- 
ducted with courtesy on both sides. Lord Kitchener, how- 
ever, ordered that the flags of England and of Egypt should 
be at once displayed, but with cool judgment and foresight 
he resolved to leave the further settlement of the question to 
the diplomacy of England and France for the moment. He 
established a Soudanese garrison at Fashoda, under the com- 
mand of one of his English officers, and went on with his other 
duties, having duly informed the British Government of the 
course he had taken. For a time the diplomatic business was 
carried on very quietly, and the English public had little sus- 
picion of the fact that a most important international crisis 
was close at hand. The English Government had long been 
suspicious of some design on the part of France, and in 1898 
the British Ambassador at Paris was authorised to tell the 
Government of the French Republic that England was de- 
termined strictly to maintain her policy as already announced 



CH. xxxv. THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW. 501 

so far back as the early part of 1895, that a French advance 
into the Nile valley would be regarded by England as 'an un- 
friendly action.' Therefore, when the Conservative Govern- 
ment announced so decisively that it was their intention to 
persevere in the proclaimed policy of their predecessors, the 
French Government must have understood thoroughly that 
if England and France could not come to a satisfactory de- 
cision as to the ownership of Fashoda, the dispute must be 
referred to the arbitrament of war. After the fall of Khar- 
toum, Lord Salisbury directed the English Ambassador in 
Paris to inform the French Government that the Fashoda 
region was now subject by right of conquest to the British and 
Egyptian Governments. The French Government still spoke 
in a very hesitating manner, and seemed inclined to argue 
that Major Marchand was only acting as an explorer with the 
object of promoting French interests in the northeast of 
Egypt. Telegrams were received by the British Government 
from Lord Kitchener announcing that Major Marchand de- 
clared that he had received instructions from the French 
Government to occupy the territory in question, and to hoist 
the French flag over the Government quarters at Fashoda, 
and that under these circumstances it was impossible for him 
to withdraw from the place without the express orders of his 
Government, which he expected would not long be delayed. 
The French Government still seemed unwilling to take any 
decisive steps for the recall of Major Marchand, and at last it 
became clear to the whole English public that there was every 
danger of war. There was a sudden and complete agreement 
between the Liberal and the Conservative leaders as to the 
necessity of making a stand side by side for the maintenance 
of the national claims and national interests. At that time 
there was no recognized peace party in the House, such as 
had existed in the days of Cobden and Bright, and the speeches 
of the leading Liberals and Conservatives spoke out the same 
determination to maintain England's claims even by war 
if France did not at once recede from the position she had 
taken up. 

The strong feeling shown all through England had its effect 
on the hesitating action of the French Government. The 
Marchand expedition was recalled in the early November of 
1898, and Fashoda was evacuated by the French Emissary 
in the following December. A profound sense of relief was 
felt in both countries, and, indeed, throughout Europe, when 
the dispute thus came to an end. The whole Fashoda inci- 
dent was not worth the trouble it cost; but we have the satis- 



502 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. XXXV. 

faction of knowing that it must have cost infinitely greater 
trouble if the French Government had not given way just in 
time. 

The attention of the world became suddenly aroused by 
the outbreak of a new and, at the time, unexpected inter- 
national quarrel. The rival Powers concerned were Spain 
and the United States — the typical Old World and the typical 
New World. Although the outbreak of this struggle was at 
the time unexpected, it had for many years been growing 
more and more evident to thinking minds that the contact 
into which the old European monarchy and the new American 
Republic were brought by Spain's dealings with her West Ind- 
ian possessions could not continue much longer without some 
complete change in its conditions. Spain was exercising a 
system of Old World tyrannical domination over Cuba and her 
other West Indian possessions within sight of shores which are 
a part of the United States. Cuba and the Philippine Islands 
were in a constant state of revolt against the rule of Spain, 
and the sympathies of a large proportion of the American 
population went with the subjected islanders and against, the 
Spanish rulers. Cuba had been for a long time a subject of 
rival claims among European Powers, and of rival attempts 
to get possession of the island and expel the Spaniards from 
it. For generations it had remained in the possession of 
Spain, but the Spanish domination was unceasingly resisted 
by native insurrections, which found many sympathisers 
among the populations of the Southern States of America. 
The Lone Star expedition was the most celebrated of the 
modern attempts to free the island from the yoke of Spain. 
The Lone Star was a secret society formed in 1848, an era of 
revolution all over the world. The organisation was got up 
chiefly in Alabama and some neighbouring States of the 
Union, and it announced that its object was 'the extension 
of the institutions, power, influence, and commerce of the 
United States over the whole of the western hemisphere, and 
the islands of the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean.' The President 
of the United States refused to give any countenance to this 
project; he issued a proclamation denouncing its object as a 
breach of international law, and calling upon all loyal Ameri- 
can citizens to use their best influence for the prevention of 
the scheme. The expedition made its attempt nevertheless, 
and, under the command of General Lopez, it effected a land- 
ing on the shore of Cuba. It was defeated by the Spanish 
troops, but Lopez and most of his comrades escaped. A sec- 
ond expedition planned by Lopez, about a year later, also 



CH. xxxv. THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW. 503 

effected a landing in Cuba, but it was a more complete failure 
than the first. Lopez was defeated, and he, with a large num- 
ber of his followers, was captured by the Spaniards. Lopez 
was put to death by the garrote, and some fifty of his fol- 
lowers were shot. Almost immediately after the execution of 
Lopez some further attempts were made to free the island 
from Spanish rule. Before three years had passed the Presi- 
dent of the United States had received information that a 
very large expedition was in course of preparation, and that 
many American sympathisers were giving it their help. Once 
again a proclamation was issued from Washington by the 
President, to warn all loyal American citizens that they must 
not join in warlike measures against a Government with which 
the United States was at peace. Three United States Envoys 
were sent to Europe to look into the whole question raised by 
the unceasing insurrection in Cuba against Spanish rule, and 
to report as to the possibility of coming to some agreement 
with Spain by which peace might be restored. The plan they 
proposed for the restoration of peace in Cuba was simply that 
the United States should buy the island from Spain and gov- 
ern it as a part of the American Republic. The pride of an- 
cient Castile, however, revolted against this proposal. The 
Spanish Prime Minister declared in the Cortes that the sale of 
Cuba to the United States would be the sale of Spanish honour. 
Then the history of Cuba continued to repeat itself — the island 
was in a state of continual insurrection. The efforts of the 
Spanish authorities to repress those insurrections were marked 
by ever-increasing and equally unavailing severity. The long- 
er this struggle went on, the more severe became the Spanish 
measures of repression, the more determined was the spirit of 
resistance among the Cuban population, and the larger the 
number of American sympathisers. Apart from all American 
sympathy with populations rightly struggling to be free, it 
was every day becoming more difficult for the Government of 
the United States to maintain an attitude of neutrality be- 
tween the Cuban insurgents and the Sovereign of Spain. The 
horrors perpetrated day after day in Cuba were creating a 
storm of passionate indignation throughout some of the Amer- 
ican States, and there was a warm sympathy with the suffer- 
ing Cubans and an earnest desire to help them. It must have 
been evident to all observers that the Cubans would never 
submit to Spanish rule so long as there remained any Cubans 
to carry on the struggle. It was equally evident that the 
United States could never consent to have that terrible trouble 
going on so near to their own shores without, sooner or later, 
33 



504 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. XXXV. 

taking decided steps to bring it to an end. The President of 
the United States saw at last that it would be impossible for 
him to hold back much longer from intervention of some kind 
in order to put a stop to the horrible events which were mak- 
ing Cuba a world's wonder. It was made known to Spain 
that if some arrangement could not be arrived at which would 
hold out a promise of peace and good government to Cuba, 
the United States must take decisive action. Some of the 
European States made overtures with the object of obtaining 
a settlement between the United States and Spain. These 
seem to have begun with Germany, and the German idea was 
that the great States of Europe should join in a representation 
to the Government at Washington on behalf of Spain's right 
to govern her own territories without the armed intervention 
of a foreign Power. This movement on the part of Germany- 
was understood to have the support of France and Austria; 
but the project came to an end, because the English Govern- 
ment refused to take any part in co-operation with it. Mr. 
Arthur Balfour, who was conducting the business of the For- 
eign Office in the absence of Lord Salisbury, met the proposal 
with statesmanlike judgment. He caused it to be notified to 
the Government at Washington that England would not, 
at this crisis, adopt any policy which could be regarded as 
unfriendly to the United States. The course taken by Mr. 
Balfour not only maintained the national credit and honour 
of England with regard to the Spanish oppression of Cuba, 
but it put an end to the movement begun by Germany, and 
left the United States and Spain to decide the issue for them- 
selves. Some friendly suggestions of submitting the dispute 
to an impartial tribunal appointed by the European Powers 
were met by the Spanish Prime Minister with a public decla- 
ration that no such arrangement had been offered by those 
Powers or could be accepted by Spain. 

In the middle of February, 1898, an event occurred which 
made the maintenance of peace almost impossible. The United 
States cruiser Maine, lying in the harbour of Havana, was 
burnt and sunk by an explosion, and two officers and 270 men 
were killed. The American Consul at Havana made a report 
to his Government in which he declared his conviction that the 
ship was destroyed by a submarine mine, which must have 
been laid in the harbour with the connivance of the Spanish 
authorities there. The local Spanish authorities protested 
strongly against the imputation, and a court of inquiry was 
held which ascribed the explosion to an accidental cause. The 
President of the United States did his best to obtain a full 



CH. xxxv. THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW. 505 

and impartial hearing for the case made by the Spanish au- 
thorities, but the effect on public opinion in America was in- 
stantaneous. It was a common belief in the States that the 
explosion had been the work of Spanish treachery, and that 
the endeavour to ascribe it to mere accident was but part of 
the moderating craft of diplomacy. None of the proposals 
made by the Government of the United States could any long- 
er receive a hearing in the excited condition of feeling in Spain, 
and no efforts made by European Powers, and even by the 
Pope himself, whose influence might be expected to count for 
something in Spain, could induce the Spaniards to accept any- 
thing in the form of mediation. At last President McKinley 
announced to Congress that the United States Government 
must declare war against Spain. This announcement was re- 
ceived with tumultuous popular rejoicings in Madrid. Spain 
was in a very poor condition to carry on a war, and was dis- 
tracted, moreover, by a formidable Carlist movement which 
strove to restore by force the old dynasty. But the Spanish 
Government nevertheless went into the war, if not with a 
light heart, at least with an unflinching spirit. A consider- 
able portion of the English public believed, even after the 
outbreak of war, that Spain would be able to show a front 
of unconquerable resistance to her American opponents. The 
Spanish fleets proved wholly incapable of coping with the war- 
vessels of the United States. The war array of Spain in the 
harbours of Havana came to speedy destruction; towns were 
taken by the Americans, and Europe had hardly time to 
study the fortunes of the war before it became known that 
the war was all over. The United States Government would 
accept no conditions of peace which did not include the abso- 
lute surrender not only of Cuba but also of the Philippine Isl- 
ands. Cuba and the Philippine Islands therefore became part 
of the dominion of the United States. The Treaty of Peace 
was signed at Paris. The Cuban population enjoyed from 
the first the immense advantage of having been made a part 
of the great Republic, which, since it was fortunate enough, 
at immense cost to itself in life and in money, to get rid of the 
detestable system of slavery, allows no servile condition to be 
imposed on any of those who people her territories. The whole 
controversy and its final settlement by war aroused the deep- 
est interest in England, and the policy adopted by the English 
Government helped in no slight degree to bring about a satis- 
factory settlement of the dispute. If England could have 
been induced to join in the proposed coalition, and thus to 
give moral support if nothing more to the Spanish Govern- 



506 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxxv. 

ment, the world might have seen disastrous international dis- 
turbance and the temporary maintenance of Spain's tyranni- 
cal power over her possessions on the other side of the Atlantic. 
There was something curiously picturesque in this sudden 
antagonism between one of the oldest and greatest Imperial 
Powers of the Old World, and the youngest of all the great 
Republics that Old World or New had ever seen. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

NEW MOVEMENTS IN ENGLAND. 

We must return for a while to subjects of domestic interest. 
The regulation of public worship in the Church of England 
had begun to be, once again, a question of vehement con- 
troversy. The introduction of what were called Ritualistic 
practices into that Church — practices which those who con- 
demned them declared to have been borrowed from the Church 
of Rome, had long been imputed to a certain class of Angli- 
can clergymen. These practices had been condemned in sev- 
eral Episcopal Charges, in reports of a commission appointed 
to inquire into the subject, and by the Judicial Committee of 
the Privy Council. In August, 1874, a measure was carried 
through Parliament called the Public Worship Regulation Act 
with the direct object of repressing Ritualism in the State 
Church. The ceremonials, usages, and emblems denounced by 
some as Ritualistic were maintained, supported, and revered 
by many clergymen of the English Church on the ground 
that they were in full accord with the teaching of that Church 
and were animated by its true spirit. Volumes of arguments 
were poured forth from either side of the dispute; conferences 
and congresses were held in Great Britain and the United 
States, with a hope of securing a settlement of the controversy; 
the peace of neighbourhoods and of families was often dis- 
turbed by the quarrels between the Ritualists and the anti- 
Ritualists. In the closing years of the Queen's reign the con- 
troversy which Parliament had vainly endeavoured to settle 
came up again. The Government brought in, early in March, 
1898, a measure on the subject of Benefices which had already 
been discussed very carefully by the Standing Committee on 
Law; and when this Bill, and Mr. Lyttelton's, which had come 
from the Standing Committee as one bill, came up for discus- 
sion in June, it was expected that the measure would pass 



ch. xxxvi. NEW MOVEMENTS IN ENGLAND. 507 

through the House of Commons without much opposition. 
But the fact that the proposed measure did not deal directly 
with the Ritualistic question was dwelt upon by some speakers 
as an especial reason for opposing the scheme of the Govern- 
ment. A motion was made on June 20 for the rejection of the 
Bill, on the ground that while professing to be a measure of 
Church reform, it did not undertake to deal with any of the 
reforms which many members of the House regarded as most 
needful. The whole subject of Ritualism was raised again, 
and one speaker actually insisted that the object of those 
who were introducing such practices into Protestant churches 
was to destroy the character of the English Church altogether, 
and to prepare the way for its absorption into the Church of 
Rome. 

The debate received a peculiar significance and importance 
from the part which was taken in it by so powerful a debater 
and so influential a statesman as Sir William Vernon Harcourt. 
Sir William Harcourt went so far as to declare that there was 
just then something amounting to a conspiracy in the English 
State Church to overthrow the principles of the Reformation, 
and he cited in support of his view a statement, reported to 
have been made by one of the Bishops in Convocation a few 
days before, that secret societies existed in the Church of Eng- 
land whose object was to overthrow the principles of the 
Protestant Reformation. Sir William Harcourt appears to 
have accepted to the full this declaration, and he denounced 
those who, while actually within the Church, were developing 
plans for its restoration to the principles and practices of Rome. 
He complained that the bishops and clergy in general had not 
been active and steadfast enough in their efforts to restrain 
or punish those members of the English Church who were en- 
deavouring to work out this conspiracy, and he contended that 
it had become all the more the duty of the House of Commons 
to interpose on behalf of the country and protect it against 
the threatened evil. 

Mr. Arthur Balfour replied on behalf of the Conservative 
Government. He began his speech with an effort to bring 
back the House to the consideration of the actual measure 
then before it, and to prevail upon members to consider it on 
its own merits, to judge it by what it proposed to do, and to 
decide whether or not its clauses were effective. He then 
went on to reply to the speech of Sir William Harcourt, and 
insisted that the dangers to the faith of children of Churchmen 
and Nonconformists were utterly exaggerated. He admitted 
that the Ritualistic practices of many clergymen were actually 



508 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxxvi. 

illegal, and that he had himself always been anxious for some 
clear and decisive definition of the law which should absolutely 
disallow the introduction of such a ritual into the State Church. 
He strongly appealed to the House not to be led away from 
the quiet discussion of the limited measure before it into a 
heated debate on the whole question of Ritualism. The ap- 
peal appears to have had a great effect. The debate had arisen 
on an amendment proposed by a member who avowed him- 
self an anti-Ritualist, but when the division came to be taken 
only seventy-five votes besides those of the proposer and Sir 
William Harcourt were given in its favour. An amendment 
was proposed next day which affirmed that power ought to be 
given to every bishop to refuse to institute any clergyman 
who 'taught doctrines contrary to or inconsistent with the 
Thirty-Nine Articles or participated in ecclesiastical practice 
not authorised by the Book of Common Prayer.' The Attor- 
ney-General, Sir Richard Webster, opposed the amendment on 
the ground that the actual law could deal with any offences 
against the doctrine of Ritual. Sir William Harcourt de- 
scribed at some length the ceremonials conducted in certain 
London and suburban churches, and he reminded the House 
that the Church of England is not composed merely of bishops 
and clergy, but includes also a lay population on whom the 
evil teachings of spiritual directors might have a disastrous 
effect. Mr. Balfour replied to the leader of the Opposition 
in a speech of measured calmness and moderation. He de- 
clined to follow Sir William Harcourt into the theological 
arena, but he expressed his frank condemnation of Ritualistic 
extravagances, but maintained that there was no danger that 
certain practices prevailing in this or that particular church 
could revolutionise the religious convictions of the mass of 
the English people. The amendment was defeated, 215 votes 
being given against it, and only 103 for it. Still, the effect of 
the discussion was substantially a gain to the anti-Ritualistic 
party. 

The differences surrounding the whole question were effec- 
tively illustrated by debates in both Houses of Parliament 
soon after the opening of the Session of 1899. On February 
9 the Bishop of Winchester, Dr. Randall Davidson, brought 
the subject directly under the consideration of the House of 
Lords. He began by calling attention to statements lately 
made respecting the action of the bishops in dealing with ir- 
regularities in public worship. In reply to some of the state- 
ments made by Sir William Harcourt, he contended that the 
bishops had never shrunk from exercising their authority when 



ch. xxxvi. NEW MOVEMENTS IN ENGLAND. 509 

it could safely be exercised with regard to the best interests 
of the Church. The most effective part of the Bishop of Win- 
chester's speech was that in which he told the House of Lords 
that prosecutions had ceased because the Church at large — 
Low as well as High — was against them. In reply, Lord Kin- 
naird, who had recently presided at a public meeting of pro- 
test against the toleration of Ritualistic practices in the 
Church of England, gave a number of figures to prove that 
such practices were greatly on the increase, and that no seri- 
ous effort was made by the Church authorities to prevent or 
discourage them. He maintained that the only subjects of 
the Crown precluded from seeking redress from the law were 
aggrieved members of the Church of England. 

Dr. Creighton, the Bishop of London, said that Sir William 
Harcourt had drawn an imaginary picture of a Church entirely 
riddled by the insidious treachery of a traitorous crew, and 
managed by a body of craven and feeble-minded bishops 
until, in this universal disaster, there suddenly stepped forth 
the colossal figure of a new Elijah denouncing judgment, but 
clamouring that somebody else, of course one of the bishops, 
should take off his hands the trouble of slaying the Priests 
of Baal. He reminded the Lords that in the opinion of most 
Englishmen religious prosecutions were closely associated with 
persecution, and that the public which goaded them on to pros- 
ecute their clergy would be the first to desert them if they did 
so. Dr. Creighton did not admit that the bishops were doing 
nothing to remove the dangers troubling the Church and the 
public. They were doing their best in all parishes where such 
questions had arisen. Lord Halifax, President of the English 
Church Union, who was generally regarded as leader of the 
Ritualist party, began his speech by stating that a great pub- 
lic meeting held in the Albert Hall to denounce Ritualistic 
practices was to a large extent composed of Nonconformists, 
and he asked whether Nonconformists were qualified to sit 
in judgment on the affairs of the Church of England. The 
main object of Lord Halifax's speech was to impress on the 
House of Lords and on the country his deep conviction that 
nothing but disaster could come from any effort to force upon 
the consciences of members of the Church of England the de- 
cisions of merely secular courts of law in spiritual affairs. The 
Earl of Kimberley argued that it was vain to disregard the 
fact that the Church of England was regulated to a large ex- 
tent by the Act of Uniformity, the charter under which the 
Church held her position — and here he came to the very heart 
of the question — not as a spiritual Church, but as a Church 



510 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxxvi. 

established by law and enjoying certain emoluments. The 
Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Temple, a distinguished repre- 
sentative of the Broad Church, denied that there had been 
any remissness on the part of the bishops in endeavouring to 
maintain the true principles of the Church in ritual and cere- 
monial. He declared his belief that the fewer prosecutions 
they had the better, and he expressed his conviction that the 
amount of anything like Romanism in the English Church 
was small and insignificant. This speech brought the debate 
to an end. No formal resolution had been proposed, and to 
take a division is unusual in the Upper House. The general 
impression was that the Archbishop's speech fairly described 
the position of the bishops. 

The question, however, came up again in the House of Com- 
mons. Mr. Samuel Smith, one of the leaders of the Evan- 
gelical party, moved a resolution declaring that 'Having re- 
gard to the lawlessness prevailing in the Church of England, 
some legislative steps should be taken to secure obedience to 
the law.' He was followed by Viscount Cranborne, who rep- 
resented the High Church party. He declared that he had 
no sympathy with the Ritualistic practices of certain clergy- 
men or with the attitude some of those clergymen had taken 
towards their ecclesiastical superiors; but he disassociated 
himself from any sympathy with movements which he could 
not but consider as an attack on the Church, and an attack 
sometimes made with weapons altogether unworthy. The de- 
bate was enlivened by a brilliant speech from Mr. Augustine 
Birrell, who told the House that, although a Nonconformist 
of the Nonconformists, he found himself utterly unable to 
lend his support to Mr. Smith's amendment. He refused to 
associate himself in any way with legislative measures designed 
to harry any school of thought within the Church. He de- 
clared that the only cure for the present troubles was to be 
found in the disestablishment of that Church, and its release 
at once from the control and the endowments of the State. 
Mr. Balfour, as leader of the House, brought the debate to a 
conclusion in a speech which was described at the time as 
thoroughly judicious in its tone and satisfactory to all but 
the holders of extreme opinions on either side. The House 
was evidently not deeply interested in the subject, for the 
votes given were only 89 for and 221 against the motion. The 
Roman Catholics and the Nonconformists took no part in the 
division. 

Yet another attempt was made in the House of Commons 
in May, the same Session, to bring about a settlement of the 



CH. XXXVI. NEW MOVEMENTS IN ENGLAND. 511 

Church question. Mr. C. Mc Arthur introduced a measure 
called the Church Discipline Bill, which proposed to set up 
a new tribunal for offences against the legalised ritual of the 
Church. It proposed to affirm the Royal Supremacy, to re- 
move the Episcopal Veto, and to substitute deprivation for 
imprisonment in cases of clerical disobedience. The Attorney- 
General encountered the motion for the introduction of this 
Bill by an amendment declaring that while the House was not 
prepared to accept a measure which at once created new 
offences and interfered with the authority of the bishops, it 
was of opinion that 'if the efforts now being made by the 
Archbishops and Bishops are not speedily effectual, further 
legislation will be required to maintain the observance of the 
existing laws of the Church and Realm.' A debate followed 
in which Lord Hugh Cecil, one of the leaders of the High 
Church party, Sir William Harcourt, and Mr. Balfour took 
part, and the Bill was rejected by 310 to 156 votes. 

With this division the struggle was brought to an end as 
far as this history is concerned. Many demonstrations of 
public feeling were made on all sides of the question before 
the close of the reign. There were deputations to the Prime 
Minister; deputations to Archbishops; public meetings in many 
parts of the country; there were Mr. Kensit's personally con- 
ducted crusades against Ritualistic practices in the Church. 
There were many controversies in the newspapers, and new 
organisations were called into existence. But the whole prob- 
lem remained unsolved to the close of Queen Victoria's reign, 
and remains still a problem for solution. 

The agitation for what are conventionally described as 
women's rights had some marked successes and emerged into 
a clearer atmosphere during the closing years of Queen Vic- 
toria's reign. Some effective work has been accomplished in 
the abolition or modification of laws and practices which ex- 
cluded women from so many occupations professional, politi- 
cal, and municipal. Many local boards already admit women 
to membership, and the Universities have done so in some in- 
stances. Measures have been brought into Parliament for the 
granting of the electoral suffrage to women who can show that 
they possess the household, lodger, or other qualification which 
entitles men to vote at an election. These measures have thus 
far been rejected by Parliament, or at least have had to be 
withdrawn after a hopeless struggle. But in some of the Brit- 
ish Colonies such measures have been passed, and the legisla- 
tive systems there have not to all appearance fallen into utter 
confusion. There does not seem any substantial reason why 



512 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxxvi. 

the statutory qualifications enabling a man to give a vote for 
his parliamentary representative should not enable a woman 
to give her vote for the same purpose. It might even be 
argued that women, forming as they do the more dependent 
sex, have for that very reason a claim the more and not a 
claim the less to the right of exercising some choice as to the 
men who are to make laws for the rule of the whole community. 
All that our system thus far requires as qualification for a 
male voter is that he shall have occupied a rateable home for 
a certain time, and the law takes no further account whatever 
of his capacity to choose the right man from among the com- 
peting candidates at the local election. As the law stands at 
present a woman of the highest education, who has proved 
her capacity as a writer of books or as a teacher in public 
institutions, is shut out from the right to give a vote, while 
the man who makes her shoes, or keeps a disreputable public- 
house in her neighborhood, may help to turn by his vote the 
electoral scale in favour of some parliamentary candidate 
whose name he had never heard a week before the election. 

During the later years of Queen Victoria's reign the advo- 
cates of women's rights were engaged for the most part in 
endeavouring to establish for women their right to enter the 
professions of law and medicine, and to bear a part in the ad- 
ministration of municipal, parochial, and other local govern- 
ing bodies. An International Congress of Women, opened at 
Westminster in the June of 1889, was presided over by Lady 
Aberdeen, who has rendered great service in such movements. 
The Congress was said to have represented some twenty-eight 
different countries, and had nearly one million and a half of 
enrolled members. Queen Victoria received a delegation of 
150 members from this Congress at Windsor Castle. Women's 
temperance associations were formed all over the civilised 
world, not with the object of working out the temperance 
cause in any form of antagonism to that which had been so 
long adopted by earnest and active men, but in order to arouse 
by direct appeal the sympathies and the co-operation of wom- 
en, and to put them in the way of spreading the cause of tem- 
perance among their own sisterhood and among the members 
of their own families in a manner which would not have been 
so readily accessible to men. One great object for all who 
believed in what is understood as the emancipation of women 
was accomplished by the remarkable success of those various in- 
stitutions. It was made distinctly evident to the world in gen- 
eral that the women of all civilised States believed themselves 
to have a common cause in view, and that they were as ca- 



ch. xxxvi. NEW MOVEMENTS IN ENGLAND. 513 

pable of disciplining themselves for the steady and regular work 
of reform as any organisation of men could possibly be. 

The time has gone by when the agitation for women's rights 
created a sort of panic in the hearts, not only of most men, 
but also of many women. The season of scare has passed, in 
dissonance, out of sight; and the further development of the 
movement will be followed with the same kind of interest and 
the same kind of controversy which attend every agitation 
for political or social reform. We have all grown familiar with 
the fact that women do establish associations of their own, 
conduct organisations of their own for the carrying of some 
scheme of reform; that they succeed with this measure, and 
have to postpone that. Now that we are accustomed to the 
idea that women are members of municipal and parochial 
boards, that their full admission to the legal and medical pro- 
fession and to University degrees is only a matter of time, we 
can understand that they may come to have the right to vote 
at parliamentary elections, and even, perhaps, to sit, if elected, 
as parliamentary representatives. This significant change in 
public feeling has been brought about almost entirely during 
Queen Victoria's reign. It began with the opening of that 
period, and the close of that period saw it expanded and im- 
proved in every sense, recognised fully by public opinion, and 
officered by women of the highest education and the greatest 
social influence. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

THE HAGUE CONFERENCE. 

The establishment of the Peace Conference at The Hague in 
1898 is an event which has hardly as yet realised the promise 
with which it was announced; but it may, despite of all dis- 
couragement and prediction of failure, come to be the opening 
of a new and most happy era in the history of the world. The 
Conference was the conception of the Czar of Russia, the Sov- 
ereign of the Power that had long been regarded by most of 
the world's civilised States as one of the great disturbers of 
human peace. The ideas and proposals of the Czar were made 
known to the world on August 24, 1898, by Count Muravieff, 
Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Imperial Court of Russia. 
His momentous despatch began with the declaration that 
'The maintenance of universal peace, and a possible reduc- 



514 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxxvu. 

tion of the excessive armaments which weigh upon all nations 
in the present condition of affairs all over the world represent 
the ideal aims towards which the efforts of all governments 
ought to be directed.' He went on to say that the present 
moment was especially favourable for seeking by way of in- 
ternational discussion 'the most effective means of securing 
for all peoples the blessings of real and lasting peace, and of 
fixing a limit to the progressive development of existing arma- 
ments.' One paragraph dwelt with great force and justice on 
the fact that 'the ever-increasing financial burdens attacked 
public prosperity at its very roots.' 'The physical and in- 
tellectual strength of the people, labour and capital, are di- 
verted for the greater part from their natural application and 
wasted unproductively.' Then came a consideration which 
is impressing itself more and more every year on all minds 
open to enlightenment, that 'hundreds of millions are spent 
to obtain frightful weapons of destruction which, while being 
regarded to-day as the latest inventions of science, are des- 
tined to-morrow to be rendered obsolete by some new dis- 
covery.' The despatch then declared that, 'impressed by this 
feeling, his Majesty has been pleased to command me to pro- 
pose to all governments accredited to the Imperial Court the 
meeting of a Conference to discuss this grave problem.' Such 
a Conference, Muravieff said, 'would, with God's help, be a 
happy augury for the opening century; would powerfully con- 
centrate the efforts of all States which sincerely wished to see 
the triumph of the grand idea of universal peace over the ele- 
ments of trouble and discord, and would at the same time 
bind their agreement by the principles of law and equity 
which support the security of States and the welfares of peo- 
ples.' 

The issue of this invitation to the civilised Powers of the 
world created at first a sensation almost of bewilderment. 
The question on the lips of most in the outer world was wheth- 
er such a proposal could be seriously and sincerely meant. 
The Czar, it was pointed out, had only quite lately been in- 
creasing his own armaments, and was thus regarded as the 
most formidable and threatening enemy of England in her 
Indian Empire. It was not possible, however, to reject such 
a proposition under these conditions, and the States invited 
to attend the Conference all announced their intention to 
accept the Czar's invitation and to go into council with him 
as to the possibility of preventing the increase of armaments, 
of trying to found an international court of arbitration, and 
making a seemly show of doing their utmost to introduce the 



ch. xxxvn. THE HAGUE CONFERENCE. 515 

reign of universal peace. It was settled that the Conference 
was really to meet and to undertake in some fashion or other 
the work proposed for it. The understanding arrived at was 
that the Conference should sit, not in the capital of one of the 
great Powers, but in that of a smaller State, and the historic 
Hague was aptly chosen as the fitting seat for such a meeting. 

The opening of the Conference took place on May 18, 1899. 
It might be justly described as a representative assembly of all 
the civilised States in the world. Every State which professed 
to be at once civilised and settled sent its representative to 
The Hague. M. de Staal, the Russian Ambassador in London, 
was chosen as President of the Conference. It was decided 
that the subjects of discussion should be divided into three 
separate orders — the question of disarmament, the establish- 
ment of certain principles of humanity to govern the making 
of war, and the principle of appeal to arbitration before any 
of the States represented at the Conference should engage in 
the work of war. It was also agreed that naval and military 
armaments should be treated as one subject where the business 
of the Conference was concerned. Around the first subject 
of debate, the question of disarmament, the most serious dif- 
ficulties arose at the opening of the Conference. How is it 
to be decided whether the armaments of this or that State are 
really too large for the positive necessity of the State's defence, 
and that this or that State is unduly taxed for the mainten- 
ance of its war material and its war forces? The Commission 
or Committee to whom this armament question was referred 
considered : first, that it would be very difficult to determine, 
even for a period of five years, the figure of effective forces 
without regulating at the same time the other elements affect- 
ing national defence; secondly, that it would be no less diffi- 
cult to regulate by an international commission the elements 
of that defence as organised and required in each country; and, 
thirdly, that the restrictions of the military burdens which at 
present weigh heavily on the world is greatly to be desired for 
the material and moral welfare of humanity. This was the 
only kind of agreement which the combined and compromis- 
ing consciences of the diplomatists could then see their way 
to adopt. 

The humanitarian question, that which was involved in the 
ever-increasing employment of torturing and death-dealing 
explosives, brought out much difference of opinion. Many 
arguments were used to show that an improvement in the 
work of rapid destruction might tend to the service of human- 
ity, inasmuch as it might bring each particular war to a more 



516 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxxvii. 

rapid close, and thus allow the contesting States to get back 
to peace at an earlier period than otherwise. A large major- 
ity at the Conference declared that no reason had been shown 
for the States to pledge themselves against the adoption of 
any new inventions in the art of dealing death on the battle- 
field. The Swiss representative proposed that the Conference 
should recommend the prohibition of explosive bullets, such 
as the dum-dum bullet, in warfare, and this proposal was sup- 
ported by the Dutch delegate, himself a military man. The 
Austrian representative opposed this motion, and urged that 
it would be enough to prohibit the use of bullets that caused 
unnecessary and cruel mutilation, and this suggestion had 
the support of the British representative, Sir John Ardagh, 
who was not likely to sanction the practice of unnecessary 
cruelty in the business of war. But it would be difficult in- 
deed to establish any definite rule as to the sort of bullet which 
ought to be condemned because of the unnecessary pain and 
mutilation it caused. The result of the deliberation was that 
a motion was carried condemning the use of bullets which 
expand in. the human body. Probably this was about as 
much as any Conference representing such a variety of States 
and of races engaged in frequent war would be likely to agree 
upon. The discussion on this particular question illustrated 
one of the evil characteristics of the whole trade of war with 
which the Hague Conference found itself every now and then 
disagreeably confronted. One can quite understand any de- 
votion of humane feeling to the mitigation of suffering among 
the wounded, the necessary victims of every battle; but when 
it comes to be a question whether some particular bullet, sup- 
posed to be most effective for the work of slaughter, is or is 
not a second or two slower in its operation than some other, 
it seems as if humanity itself might sicken over the discussion. 
Each side engaged in the battle has for its ultimate purpose 
to kill the largest number it can of the enemy's men. The ad- 
vocates of the latest invented and most deadly explosive might 
fairly contend that it brings the war to an end more quickly 
than any other, and ought therefore to be regarded as further- 
ing the interests of peace. Again, unless the Conference could 
secure a unanimous condemnation of a particular explosive the 
result would be to give the dissenting States a decided advan- 
tage in war over those which had, for the sake of humanity, 
accepted the condemnation and pledged themslves to act upon 
it. The whole subject is so full of horrors that we can well 
understand the difficulty felt by the Conference in coming to 
any stringent resolution. 



ch. xxxvii. THE HAGUE CONFERENCE. 517 

Then came the great question of international arbitration. 
This was the matter of surpassing importance which the Con- 
ference had to discuss, and the subject too which could be 
most effectively decided by a general and final agreement. 
Sir Julian Pauncefote, the British representative, moved a 
resolution calling for a permanent Committee of International 
Arbitration before which disputing States would have to sub- 
mit their rival claims, and to whose decision and advice it 
would be their duty to listen before they took any steps for 
the enforcement of their demands. This proposition was fi- 
nally adopted in substance, and in that adoption is to be found 
the historical value of the whole Conference. A series of 
resolutions was agreed upon and embodied in a document 
which was described as 'A Convention for the peaceful settle- 
ment of international conflicts/ One of these articles de- 
clared that the signatory Powers 'agree that, in case of grave 
disagreement or conflict, before appealing to arms, they will 
have recourse, so far as circumstances allow it, to the good 
offices or meditation of one or more of the friendly Powers.' 
Another set forth that 'the signatory Powers consider it use- 
ful that one or more Powers that are not concerned in the 
conflict should offer, of their own initiative, so far as the cir- 
cumstances lend themselves to it, their good offices or their 
mediation to the disputing States,' and 'the Powers not con- 
cerned in the conflict have the right of offering their good 
offices or their mediation even during the course of hostilities/ 
and that ' the exercise of this right can never be considered by 
either of the disputing parties as an unfriendly act.' Then the 
proposed agreement went on to define the duties of the me- 
diating Powers. 'The part. of the mediator consists in the 
reconciliation of contrary pretensions, and in the allaying of 
the resentments which may be caused between the disputing 
States.' The duties of the mediator were to come to an end 
from the moment when it was announced, whether by one of 
the disputing parties or by the mediator himself, that the basis 
of a friendly understanding proposed by him had not been 
accepted. The representatives of the Conference thought it 
well to put on record some articles providing for and recom- 
mending the application of a special form of mediation in 
certain instances. One of these was that in the case of a 
grave disagreement which seemed to threaten war, the dis- 
puting States should each choose one Power to which they 
might intrust the mission of entering into direct communica- 
tion with the Power chosen by the other side, for coming to a 
peaceful settlement of the dispute. The article provided that 



5i8 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxxvu. 

during the continuance of such an arrangement the question 
in dispute was understood to be reserved exclusively for the 
two chosen Powers, who must apply all their efforts for the 
time to the settlement of that controversy. It was further 
suggested that the duration of the mandate should not, unless 
the contrary had been specially stipulated, exceed thirty days. 
This was not in itself a stipulation of cardinal importance, but 
of course it was well that some limitation of time should be 
suggested. A much more important provision was one de- 
claring that in case of the actual rupture of pacific relations 
the two Powers charged with the effort at a peaceful settle- 
ment should still remain intrusted 'with the common mission 
of profiting by every opportunity of re-establishing peace.' 
The Powers signing the treaty reserved to themselves the 
liberty to conclude 'new agreements, general or particular, 
with the object of extending compulsory arbitration to all 
cases they judged capable of being submitted to it.' It was 
agreed that a permanent court of arbitration, accessible at all 
times in conformity with the rules of procedure set forth by 
the Conference, should be established at once. An Interna- 
tional department was to be founded at The Hague and placed 
under the direction of a permanent official staff, and this 
office was to be the medium for all communications dealing 
with the meetings of the arbitrating court. The International 
Tribunal was to sit usually at The Hague, but it was to have 
the right to sit elsewhere if such an arrangement was thought 
desirable, and with the consent of the States engaged in the 
dispute. There was also a provision of much importance to 
the effect that every Power, even although not a signatory of 
the act of agreement, could apply to the court for the benefit 
of its arbitration under the conditions laid down by the exist- 
ing Convention. It was agreed that a permanent council, 
composed of the diplomatic representatives of the signatory 
Powers resident at The Hague, was to be constituted in that 
city, to be presided over by the Dutch Minister for Foreign 
Affairs, and that this council was to be charged with estab- 
lishing and organising the international offices, which were to 
remain under its direction and its control. 

The great result of the whole Conference proclaimed itself 
to be the formation of a court ever open at The Hague for the 
peaceful settlement of all disputes arising among the powers 
which had signed the treaty, or even between States which had 
never taken part in ohe Conference, but which, nevertheless, had 
themselves expressed a desire to have the question at issue de- 
cided by the International Tribunal. Here, then, was an en- 



CH. xxxvii. THE HAGUE CONFERENCE. 519 

tirely new and to all appearance beneficent principle intro- 
duced into the government of the world's political affairs. 
No scheme like this had ever before in history been agreed 
upon by the world's great ruling States, or had even been con- 
sidered by them as capable of serious and practical discussion 
with a view to the peaceful settlement of international dis- 
putes. That such an event should come from the inspiration 
of a Russian ruler might seem something like a paradox in 
history. But as we have high poetic authority for believing 
that the path of safety for a great Trojan hero once came 
through a Grecian city, we may be encouraged in the hope 
that the path of the world to the practice of peaceful arbitra- 
tion may be found under the guidance even of a Russian 
autocrat. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

THE SESSION OF 1899. 

The opening of Parliament, on February 7, 1899, had been 
preceded by a political campaign of much importance through- 
out the constituencies. The speeches delivered were of pecul- 
iar interest, just at that time, because everyone knew that 
there were distracting influences at work among the Liberals, 
and that new shades of opinion were beginning to appear even 
among the Conservatives. The Liberal party had come un- 
der a new leadership. When Sir William Harcourt had an- 
nounced his resolve not to hold the position of leader any 
longer, the Liberals had, after much discussion, agreed to 
elect Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman to the vacated place. 
It was well known throughout the country that this choice 
was not the spontaneous and unanimous decision of the Lib- 
eral representatives. Even among the leaders of the Liberal 
party there were now some men who, if they did not actually 
renounce their faith in Home Rule for Ireland, were inclined 
to put the whole question aside for the time. Before the 
opening of the Session more than one influential member of 
the Liberal Opposition had on a public platform declared his 
belief that Home Rule had ceased to be a question of imme- 
diate interest, and that even Ireland herself had other legis- 
lative duties which she would do well to consider as more 
pressing and practical. Imperialism, too, was a subject on 

which the Liberals had not come, and were not likely to come, 
34 



520 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxxviii. 

into agreement. Mr. John Morley had devoted some of his 
most earnest and powerful speeches during the recess to a 
denunciation of Imperialism and its ways, while some of the 
most rising of the younger men in the party had occasionally 
indulged of late in the glorifying of Imperialism. 

There were differences of opinion, too, among the Conserva- 
tives; but nobody supposed that these would be likely to 
affect just then the existence of the Conservative Government 
while the Liberal party was about to enter on an entirely fresh 
chapter of its existence under the experimental guidance of a 
new leader. There were, however, some differences of opinion 
already beginning to show themselves on the ministerial side 
of the House of Commons. To that side, too, belonged some 
young and rising men whose public addresses were beginning 
to mark them out as very independent supporters, or as very 
independent critics, of the Conservative Administration. One 
of these was Lord Hugh Cecil, son of the Prime Minister. Lord 
Hugh had begun to take a highly independent part in the 
House of Commons with regard to religious questions and the 
manner in which these were affected by existing laws ; he had 
already made himself an influence in the House, and seemed 
to be bent on creating a party of his own to act with him on 
these questions. 

The Session of 1899 was opened by Royal Commission, and 
the Speech from the Throne was read by the Lord Chancellor. 
It mentioned among other things the expedition against the 
Dervishes, paying a tribute to the services of Lord Kitchener; 
the establishment of the Government at Crete, under Prince 
George of Greece; the Conference at The Hague, and the 
Queen's willingness to 'take part in its deliberations.' The 
assassination of the Empress of Austria was deplored. The 
speech then told of various measures to be submitted to Parlia- 
ment during the Session. There was nothing to denote that 
any measures involving grave controversy were likely to be 
brought under the notice of Parliament. The address in reply 
was moved in both Houses, and Lord Kimberlej^ in the Lords 
entered on a survey of the Government's policy in the East. 

In the Commons there was naturally more animation and 
difference of opinion. Early in the debate Sir Henry Camp- 
bell-Bannerman made his first appearance as leader of the 
Opposition. He spoke on the subject of the Peace Conference 
at The Hague, and Mr. Balfour replied. Amendments were 
proposed regarding the ownership and taxation of land in 
towns, and on the condition of agriculture in Wales. An 
amendment, which must have a peculiar interest for readers 



ch. xxxviii. THE SESSION OF 1899. 52! 

at the present day, was proposed by Mr. Labouchere, and took 
the form of an amendment to the Address declaring that the 
House of Lords should be allowed once to reject a bill passed 
by the House of Commons, but that, if after such a rejection 
the same bill were to be passed unaltered by the House of 
Commons in the following Session, it should then forthwith 
become the law of the land. This amendment seems to have 
somewhat embarrassed all but the more advanced members of 
the Liberal party. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman urged as 
a practical objection to Mr. Labouchere's proposal, £hat it 
would invest the Sovereign with an entirely new constitutional 
power by enabling her to give the final Royal assent to a meas- 
ure which had been passed by only one parliamentary cham- 
ber. He declared that he desired as much as anyone could to 
have the Lords' power of veto regulated and restricted accord- 
ing to some principle unlike that then prevailing, which gave 
to an hereditary assembly a right to interfere with the desire 
of the public expressed through their constitutional repre- 
sentatives. Mr. Balfour, who spoke on behalf of the Govern- 
ment, urged that the Peers had always shown themselves 
amenable to public opinion, and would never long resist any 
reform for which the people continued to call. The numbers 
taken on the division illustrated the fact that the preroga- 
tives of the House of Lords had not yet become a burning 
question. Only 223 Conservative members voted in defence 
of what their political faith is supposed to regard as the main- 
stay of the British constitution, while but 105 Liberals gave 
their votes for the purpose of emancipating the cause of re- 
form from the domination of the hereditary legislators. 

The grievances of the Scottish Crofters were brought for- 
ward, but did not occupy much time, the Government making 
vague promises. Then Mr. Swift MacNeill moved an amend- 
ment to the Address on the subject of ministers of the Crown 
holding directorships in public companies. Mr. MacNeill de- 
clared that twenty-five out of the forty-four ministers of the 
present Government held no less than forty-one directorships, 
and that the union of such offices was calculated to lower the 
dignity of public life. The debate on this amendment occu- 
pied the greater part of two sittings. Nothing definite came 
of it at the time, but it is a subject which is likely to come up 
again and again until some satisfactory settlement is ob- 
tained. 

The question of Home Rule was brought up in an amend- 
ment moved by Mr. John Redmond, evidently less for the 
purpose of testing the Government than for that of testing 



522 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxXvill. 

the Liberal Opposition as to the principles of Home Rule for 
Ireland. It was believed that the Liberal leaders had fallen 
away from the position held by Mr. Gladstone, and that Sir 
Henry Campbell-Bannerman's speech left little doubt that the 
Liberals were not, for the time, prepared to maintain the prin- 
ciple of Home Rule in the spirit prevailing in the days of 
Gladstone, Harcourt, and Morley. ] 

Mr. Michael Davitt spoke on the subject of the distress in 
the West of Ireland, and other Irish questions were brought 
forward in the form of amendments to the Address. 

The debate on the Address foreshadowed many matters 
which were to occupy the attention of the House during the 
Session — the policy of the Government in Egypt and China; 
the relations of England with great European States claiming 
to have interests in those countries and in India; the state of 
the Army and Navy, and other questions of home and foreign 
politics. 

On February 23 the Government introduced their promised 
measure for the municipal rearrangement of the metropolis. 
The Local Government Bill was introduced by Mr. Balfour, 
and he assured the House that the organisation of the City 
of London, with all its charters and privileges, was to remain 
untouched. The measure had for its main object to convert 
the whole of the metropolis into separate and independent 
local councils, each intrusted with the management of the 
constituency it represented. Each municipality must contain 
a population of over 100,000 and under 400,000. Each of the 
municipalities was to have a mayor, aldermen, and councillors, 
the aldermen to bear the same proportion to the councillors 
as in the provinces; the offices to be held for the same period, 
and the elections to take place in November. The duties 
then performed by the vestries to be transferred to the gov- 
erning bodies of the new municipalities; an Order in Council 
was to fix the numbers of aldermen and councillors, and every 
municipality was to be divided into wards. 

The second reading of the Bill opened on March 21. Mr. 
Herbert Gladstone criticised many of its details. The debate 
lasted for some days. The committee stage of the Bill occu- 
pied the greater part of twelve sittings, and one of the most 
keenly contested questions was as to the admission of women 
to be aldermen or councillors. This question came up again 
on the report stage, but the proposal was rejected by the Lords, 
and when again brought forward by Mr. Leonard Courtney, 
on the Bill coming back to the Commons, it was rejected there 
also. The Act for the new and better government of London, 



CH. xxxvni. THE SESSION OF 1899. 523 

which became law in due course, like most other reforms in 
their earlier stages, only marked the way which improvement 
was destined to take. 

The early spring of 1899 showed some significant events in 
the progress of great educational and philanthropic move- 
ments. Not long after the opening of the Session a measure 
entitled 'The Education of Children Bill' was introduced by 
Mr. W. S. Robson, Q.C., which proposed to make a serious 
change in the relations of the education and the employment 
of children. The principal object of the measure was to pro- 
vide that the earliest age at which a child might give up at- 
tendance at school in order to enter into employment should 
be advanced from eleven to twelve years, and should apply 
to all children except such as, under peculiar and legally recog- 
nised conditions, were wholly or partly exempt from attend- 
ance at school. The principle involved in the proposed meas- 
ure had already been a subject of much public discussion in 
England and in other European States. A Conference had 
been held at Berlin, in 1890, on the general subject of factory 
labour, and there the principle of the Bill with regard to chil- 
dren employed in factories had been accepted by the British 
representatives with, it was generally understood, the express 
approval of Lord Salisbury. Since that time nothing had been 
done by any English Government, whether Liberal or Con- 
servative, to put the principle into action by force of statute. 
In some other States, where the proposal to limit the working 
time for children had been acted upon in the interests of edu- 
cation, the results had been found to be entirely satisfactory. 
Mr. Robson, when moving the second reading of the Bill, on 
the 1st of March, showed that England thus far occupied a 
position which compared unfavourably with that of some 
Continental States; he strongly condemned the half-time 
system, on the ground that it proved prejudicial not only to 
the interests of education, but also to the real interests of the 
manufacturing industries. A strong and outspoken opposition 
came from some of the representatives of Lancashire manu- 
facturing districts, and from some Conservative representa- 
tives of agricultural regions. The most remarkable stand 
made for the Bill was that of Sir John Gorst, then Vice-Presi- 
dent of the Council, who acted in this instance with the char- 
acteristic independence he had shown many times before, and 
was to show again in later days. Sir John Gorst was well 
known to have made a close practical study of the whole sub- 
ject, and had been the representative of the English Govern- 
ment at the sittings of the Berlin Conference. He gave his 



524 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxxvm. 

full support to the principle of the measure, so far as it ap- 
plied to the employment of children in the factories of cities 
and towns, or in any manner of factory work wherever carried 
on. He insisted that no real loss even of a pecuniary kind 
would come to the manufacturers in the end from the pro- 
posed arrangements, which were to secure for the children of 
the poor a better education before being handed over to the 
making of money in order to help in the support of their 
families. He drew a clear distinction between the employ- 
ment of children in factories and factory districts and their 
employment in fields and agriculture, and pointed out that 
the employment of children in field work was not one of the 
subjects which came directly under the consideration of the 
Berlin Conference; that it was quite possible to reconcile the 
employment of children in the country with a steady progress 
in education, and that the children employed in the fields 
might well be obliged to attend school until a comparatively 
advanced age, and might be saved from any possible disad- 
vantages coming from too much study by the closing of the 
schools in summer when agricultural operations were going 
on. Mr. Asquith, on the part of the Liberals, explained that 
he accepted Mr. Robson's bill, not as a final measure, but only 
as a welcome step on the way to educational reform. The 
second reading was carried by 317 votes to 59. The slight 
interest which the Government took in the measure was made 
manifest by the fact that only one member of the Administra- 
tion voted for. the second reading, that Minister being Mr. 
Ritchie, who had often shown an independent activity in the 
help which he rendered to schemes of industrial and educa- 
tional reform coming from whatever party or section. Mr. 
Robson's bill came before the House of Commons again on 
May 31, which being Derby Day, might seem ill-suited to 
secure a good attendance for a measure brought forward by 
a private member receiving no general official support. Under 
the new regulations the House met on Derby Day, and Mr. 
Robson's bill came on for discussion in Committee. A dila- 
tory amendment was moved to the effect that the further 
progress of the measure, or at least its operation in law, should 
be postponed for five years, so that the employers might be 
allowed a proper opportunity to prepare for the new condi- 
tions which the measure was destined to introduce. On a 
division being taken the motion for delay was supported by 
only ten votes in a House which contained the somewhat 
large attendance, for the Derby Day, of 173 members. Again 
and again efforts were made to effect alterations in the Bill, 



CH. xxxviii. THE SESSION OF 1899. 525 

or to prevent it from getting any further forward during the 
limited time which a private measure could have in a busy 
session. When the Bill was brought on for its third reading, 
on June 4, some new attempts were made to prevent it from 
completing its progress; but by this time the great majority 
of the House had become alive to the genuine importance of 
the measure, and to the very moderate nature of the whole- 
some reforms which it introduced. The Bill passed through 
the House of Commons, and early in the following month went 
successfully through its ordeal in the House of Lords. The 
measure was only a step in the progress of a great and bene- 
ficial movement, but it was thoroughly characteristic of the 
spirit of modern improvement. 

One of the proposed reforms in our social legislation, about 
which a great deal was heard during these later years of 
Queen Victoria's reign, was the scheme for a Government sys- 
tem by which industrious and provident persons in the poorer 
classes could be enabled to secure a certain amount of pension 
for their old age. The central idea of the scheme was that an 
arrangement should be made by which the working-classes 
might be enabled to deposit periodical sums under public 
security, so that when they had reached the period of life 
after which hard work can no longer be carried on, they might 
reckon on having a small weekly pension which would be 
enough to keep them out of the workhouse. The principle of 
the proposed system was thoroughly economic in the best 
sense of the word. Mr. Chamberlain at one time identified 
himself with the scheme, and was, indeed, entitled to be re- 
garded as its author, so far as our modern days are concerned. 
But though the project was brought forward again and again, 
and created much discussion in Parliament and outside it, it 
began after a while to hang fire. Nothing could have been 
in the true sense more pressing as a project of social reform, 
but it had the disadvantage that it did not clamour for im- 
mediate settlement, and the leaders of parties and sections 
found that something else was always coming up which politi- 
cal interests would not allow them to overlook for the moment. 
We may be sure, however, that the proposal for a national 
system of old-age pensions is destined before long to come to 
the front again, and to be carried to its full accomplishment. 

On April 21, 1899, a great meeting was held at the Mansion 
House, London, to promote the objects and maintain the 
funds of the Salvation Army. Lord Aberdeen, Lord Monks- 
well, and Mr. Cecil Rhodes were present. Mr. Rhodes bore 
high personal testimony to the work which the Salvation 



526 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. XXXVIII. 

Army was accomplishing in South Africa, and he gave 2001. 
to its funds. Lord Aberdeen tendered his high tribute of 
praise to the labours of the Salvation Army in Western Aus- 
tralia. The Salvation Army had at length come to be recog- 
nised by all classes in England as a power of the highest in- 
fluence and value in the promotion of sobriety, morality, in- 
dustry, and intelligence among the poor of these countries, and 
in all countries where its work had been carried on. The great 
meeting we have just told of was only one of many public dem- 
onstrations got up in appeal to the country for the support 
of the Salvation Army's work, Emerson, if we remember 
rightly, said that every great idea, no matter how universal 
may have been its gradual acceptance, had its origin in the 
mind of one man. General Booth originated the enterprise 
of the Salvation Army; gave it a name which it has ever since 
borne; acted as its leader; led its invasion of every civilised 
country in the world, and of many not yet civilised; and even 
when he had grown into old age continued to be its Commander- 
in-Chief. In his early days he was a minister of the Methodist 
New Connection in the East End of London. There he had 
ample opportunities of observing the misery, the ignorance, 
the utter lack of education, the drunkenness, the many vices 
prevailing in all that region. The idea came into his mind 
that those evils must be assailed by some form of actual in- 
vasion, and from that idea came the scheme of the Salvation 
Army. He gathered around him a number of earnest and de- 
voted men and women who were willing to be led by him into 
an organised invasion of the realms of ignorance, squalor, and 
vice. He then assumed that military title which he has ever 
since retained. The Salvation Army established its posts and 
stations in every country throughout Europe, in the United 
States and South America, in Australasia, India, South Africa, 
the West Indies, Japan, and indeed in every region where a 
foothold could be obtained. This enterprise required large 
funds to support it, and General Booth made appeals again 
and again to the generosity of the public in every country he 
invaded, and his appeals seemed everywhere to have met with 
generous response. General Booth published many volumes 
and pamphlets, and wrote many articles in exposition of his 
views. In 1880 he started a weekly gazette devoted to his 
regenerating projects, and called by the appropriate name of 
the War Cry. A version of the same journal is published 
at every colonial and foreign centre of the Salvation Army, 
and the War Cry is understood to have a circulation of nearly 
700,000 copies. The inspiring purpose of the Salvation Army's 



ch. xxxvm. THE SESSION OF 1899. 527 

work appears to be the awakening of the poor themselves to 
some sense of the immediate cause of their poverty and misery, 
and to bring to their huts and garrets the means of obtaining 
a better living by their own exertions. Every man and wom- 
an to whom a direct appeal is made is offered by the Salvation 
Army the means of entering upon a better course of existence. 
The drunkard is put in the way of obtaining the shelter of an 
inebriate asylum until he shall have grown strong enough to 
come out into active life, and then the means of making a 
decent livelihood are brought within his reach. There are 
homes for fallen women, and they, too, are helped to earn 
their daily bread in decency and morality. The agricultural 
labourer has employment on the land found for him, and the 
denizen of the slums is not allowed for want of work to drift 
into pauperism. Those who seek the help of the Salvation 
Army are invited to enroll themselves in its ranks, and are 
taught to feel that they are no longer mere waifs of society, 
but members of a powerful organisation serving under a com- 
mon flag. Each man and woman enrolled in that army and 
serving under that flag becomes a missionary of the order and 
feels a personal pride in proclaiming its doctrine and expand- 
ing the field of its work. As the years of its movement have 
gone on it has more and more been able to vindicate not only 
its purposes, but its practical results, and to be regarded as 
one of the great reforming movements of the age. The Salva- 
tion Army has made for itself a place in our history. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

NEW IRELAND. 

Ireland had for some time been passing through changes 
which led to a new and auspicious development. After the 
death of Charles Stewart Parnell, the Nationalists had re- 
mained for a while divided into separate, even antagonistic, 
parties. The large majority of Nationalist members remained 
under one leadership, while the other party, led by Mr. John 
Redmond, was small in numbers — indeed only a group of men 
who had remained attached to Parnell under all conditions. 
Mr. John Redmond, a man of undoubted parliamentary capac- 
ity, had a remarkable gift of eloquence, which he could adapt 
to the House of Commons or the public platform. Though he 
belonged to the landlord class, he was a convinced and earnest 



528 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxxix. 

Nationalist. He had been a member of the House of Com- 
mons from his early manhood, and no member even among 
the official ranks better understood the rules and the prece- 
dents of Parliament. The majority of the party was led for 
some sessions by Mr. John Dillon, himself a typical and com- 
manding figure in Irish political life. Mr. Dillon was the son 
of a distinguished Irish patriot, whose whole life had been 
devoted to the cause of Ireland, and who stood at the side of 
Smith O'Brien in the unsuccessful effort at rebellion made by 
the Young Ireland party in 1848, although he himself had not 
been in favour of that hasty and unprepared movement. He 
had then been for many years an exile in the United States, 
but when an amnesty was granted to all concerned in the 
movement of 1848, he returned to Ireland, and accepted a seat 
in the House of Commons. His son, John Dillon, had entered 
public life with a full endowment of his father's national spirit 
and political capacity. But John Dillon was not satisfied with 
the conditions under which he had to lead the majority of the 
party. He became convinced that a complete reconciliation 
between the two sections was not easy of attainment while the 
majority remained under the leadership of one of those who 
had felt compelled to separate themselves from Parnell, and 
that a most important step towards reconciliation would be 
taken if the majority were to announce their wish to choose 
a leader from the ranks of the Parnellite minority. A sug- 
gestion was made about this time by the Catholic Archbishop 
of Toronto, Canada, that a National Convention representa- 
tive of the Irish race throughout the world should be held in 
Dublin with the object of bringing about a reconciliation be- 
tween the separated sections of the Irish Parliamentary party. 
At a meeting of his party, Dillon moved a resolution accepting 
the Archbishop's suggestion, inviting immediate action for 
the holding of an Irish National Convention, and, not long 
after, Dillon moved a resolution at another meeting, inviting 
John Redmond and his friends to co-operate in the forthcom- 
ing National Convention. Some of Redmond's leading fol- 
lowers promptly responded to the invitation and took an 
active part in carrying out the arrangements. The Conven- 
tion assembled in Dublin in the early days of September, 1896. 
More than 2,000 representatives from all parts of Great Britain 
and Ireland, from the United States, the Canadian and Aus- 
tralasian Colonies, and indeed from all regions of the world 
where Irishmen were settled, took part in the proceedings. 
The Convention came to an entire agreement as to all the prin- 
ciples and the demands of the Irish Nationalists at home, the 



CH. xxxix. NEW IRELAND. 529 

claims for an Irish Parliament, for political, educational, agrari- 
an, and industrial reform, and for complete restoration to unity 
in the Irish Parliamentary party. One of the most conspicu- 
ous of Ireland's active patriotic workers at this time, and for a 
long time before, Michael Davitt, exerted all his great influence 
over his countrymen to bring about that union of the separated 
parties which John Dillon was endeavouring to accomplish. 
It was agreed upon that a conference of the Nationalist mem- 
bers should be held in Dublin to decide upon some plan to 
effect the reconciliation. At that meeting a resolution was 
passed declaring the readiness of those present, mainly belong- 
ing to the majority, to support the choice of a member of the 
Parnellite party as first chairman of the united Parliamentary 
body. To carry this determination more promptly into effect, 
Mr. Dillon announced his intention to resign the chairmanship 
of the larger party. The two Nationalist sections, which had 
been so long in conflict, accomplished, in great measure under 
John Dillon's inspiration, a complete reunion. The whole 
party met on February 7, 1900, and John Redmond was chosen 
leader. The reunited party has since then gone on with entire 
parliamentary cohesion and with remarkable success. The 
position of the new leader was much strengthened at this time 
by the founding of the United Irish League in Ireland, a new 
organisation for the purpose of combining the Irish National- 
ists into a self-governing league for the promotion of Home 
Rule and Land Tenure reform. It was proposed to make the 
United Irish League, and not the Parliamentary party or the 
various political institutions, the ruling power in Irish national 
politics, the Nationalist members of Parliament being a part of 
its machinery. It was called into existence by Mr. William 
O'Brien, a man of honourable character and an enthusiast 
whose whole life was devoted to purposes which he and those 
who worked with him believed to be rightful. The League 
became a controlling power in Ireland, and was supported by 
Irishmen in Canada, Australasia, and the United States. We 
may anticipate history so far as to say that every Session 
saw some fresh effort made by the Government, up to this 
time Conservative, to pass new measures for the improvement 
of the Land Tenure system in Ireland. There has been a 
most encouraging diminution in all manner of violent agita- 
tion in Ireland, and the Judges at assizes are constantly pro- 
claiming from the Bench their gratification at the steady de- 
crease of violence and outrage throughout the country. The 
obvious explanation of this is the conviction of the Irish people 
in general that the protection afforded to them by their Nation- 



53© A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xxxix. 

alist leaders is becoming more powerful for good, and that 
Governments, whether Liberal or Conservative, are realising 
that there can be peace in the land only when legislation has 
gone to work in recognition of the national demand. 

The later years of Queen Victoria's reign were signalled in 
Ireland by a great movement for the restoration of the Gaelic 
language and literature. The Gaelic language includes Irish, 
Scottish, and Manx Gaelic, and the Irish Gaelic contains a 
characteristic and noble literature in prose and verse. For a 
long time Irish had ceased to be the possession of what are 
called the better or educated classes in Ireland. The use of 
Irish had at different times been prohibited in Ireland under 
pain of penal consequences, and though no severity of legis- 
lation could prevent the bulk of the peasantry in most parts 
of the country speaking it, yet among those who accepted 
English ways it passed out of use. The Irish language, that 
had been kept alive through the terrors of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries, seemed doomed to perish in the fashion- 
able neglect of the nineteenth century. Literary and scholar- 
ly associations were formed to spread the study of Irish, but 
for several generations nothing much came of these efforts. 
During the later years of the Queen's reign the movement 
began to show the qualities of a practical organisation, and 
many young and gifted writers became captivated by it. It 
was a national movement in the truest sense, taken up not 
only by those who were in sympathy with the National cause, 
but by many who took no part in politics. Many people now 
realised for the first time that their country had a language 
and literature of its own, and set themselves at once to learn 
Gaelic. It may be admitted on all sides that the movement 
for the restoration of the Gaelic literature and language is one 
of the important and hopeful events of the time in Ireland, 
and should be encouraged by having the cordial support of 
all those who love literature and would fain recover the buried 
treasures of the past. 

A memorable event in the closing years of Queen Victoria's 
reign was the visit of the Sovereign to Ireland. It was well 
understood at the time that this visit was projected by the 
Queen herself and entirely of her own motion, and that it did 
not come from the prompting of any among her recognised 
official advisers. Indeed, the general impression was that her 
advisers were disposed to discourage such a project. They 
were governed by the idea that, considering recent political 
events, the Queen might be received in the island with any- 
thing but a generous welcome; that there might even be vehe- 



ch. xxxix. NEW IRELAND. 531 

merit displays of hostility in some parts of Ireland where the 
Sovereign was expected to make her appearance. But the 
Queen appeared to have made up her mind. It may have 
been — indeed, from some spoken words of her own, it would 
seem to have been — that the Queen felt at heart a regret for 
the long estrangement between herself and the Irish people. 
Forty years had passed since her first visit to Ireland, and 
there can be no doubt that the common belief of the Irish was 
that the Sovereign held them in but slight regard. The Queen 
carried out her resolve, and her visit to Ireland was made in 
the opening of April, 1900. The Queen's visit was preluded on 
her behalf by the announcement of Her Majesty's desire that 
on the coming St. Patrick's Day, and on all future returns of 
that day, the Irish soldiers in her service should wear the em- 
blematic shamrock. This anniversary had up to that time 
been an occasion of dissatisfaction to the Irish soldiers who 
desired to wear the shamrock, and who were often prevented 
from doing so by the orders of commanding officers who did 
not believe themselves authorised to allow the display of that 
trefoil which had become the symbol of Irish nationality. 
The order now issued by the Queen was therefore welcomed 
as a graceful act on the part of the Sovereign, and as a recogni- 
tion of the national feeling. The Queen was received in Dub- 
lin with every sign of respect, and even with a general ex- 
pression of popular welcome. The Lord Mayor of Dublin 
delivered an address to the Queen, in reply to which she de- 
clared that she had come to ' This fair country to seek change 
and rest, and to revisit scenes which recall to my mind, among 
the thoughts of the losses which years must bring, the hap- 
piest recollections of a warm-hearted welcome given to me 
and my beloved husband and children,' and then followed 
some words of gratitude to 'the motherland of those brave 
sons who had borne themselves in defence of my Crown and 
Empire with a cheerful valour as conspicuous now as ever in 
their glorious past.' The Queen's stay in Ireland lasted about 
three weeks. No hostile demonstration whatever interfered 
with the success of the visit. The recognised leaders of the 
Irish National Party did not take part in the demonstra- 
tions of welcome. They felt, not unnaturally, that the Irish 
Nationalists as a party could not identify themselves with 
demonstrations of welcome to a ruler who, whatever her own 
personal feelings, was the representative of a Power which 
had of late only made itself known in Ireland by the enforce- 
ment of exceptional penal laws against organisations formed 
to carry out by constitutional and parliamentary methods the 



532 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xxxix. 

policy of Ireland's cause. There was no hostile feeling to the 
Queen in person among the whole Irish population, nor did 
the National leaders encourage any movement which might 
have seemed to embody such a feeling. Queen Victoria's 
visit may, under all circumstances, be regarded as a success, 
and there is no doubt that it created throughout the whole 
country, north and south, a common and sincere desire that 
the Queen might again come to Ireland. Many a wish was 
breathed at that time, in every part of the island, that the 
Queen, or some one of her successors, might before long be 
present at the opening of an Irish National Parliament. 



CHAPTER XL. 

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR. 

Events of much significance were casting shadows before on 
the condition of the States in South Africa. Paul Kruger had 
been elected once again, and by an immense majority, Presi- 
dent of the Transvaal State, and on May 12, 1898, he took the 
oath of office at Pretoria, and addressed a large gathering of 
members of the Assembly and others. He declared in his 
speech that the Outlanders were very welcome in the Trans- 
vaal State, and that so long as they obeyed the laws of the 
State there could be no wish to urge their departure from it. 
Shortly after, President Steyn, of the Orange Free State, was 
entertained at a banquet by President Kruger, and in replying 
to the toast of his health he gave it as his opinion that the 
proposal of the formation of the South African States into one 
Union of Federation was not practical, for the reason that 
the Republican States could only join in such a confederacy 
if it were worked on Republican principles, while he assumed 
that the British colonists would only accept a place in it if it 
were worked on the lines of the Imperial system. 

These words illustrated the main difficulties with which 
South Africa had to contend. It was certain that the British 
colonists would never agree to any terms of union which might 
make them liable to become, or to be regarded as, dependent 
on the policy of President Kruger and his allies. It was 
equally certain that the Dutch inhabitants of the Transvaal 
had only accepted the suzerainty of Great Britain on com- 
pulsion. From the beginning the settlement agreed upon 
after Majuba Hill had been accepted, in a very limited sense, 



ch. XL. THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR. 533 

and after open declarations from President Kruger that the 
suzerainty was understood to apply only to the dealings of 
the Transvaal Republic with foreign States, and to their rela- 
tions with the Sovereign of Great Britain. The Orange Free 
State was already regarded as a close ally of the Transvaal. 
The discovery of the gold-mines bad brought into South Africa 
a rush of adventurous immigrants from various parts of the 
world, especially from England and from British territories, 
whose principal object was to make themselves the absolute 
rulers of all that vast tract of country which was teeming with 
limitless sources of wealth. The established Republics were 
not strong enough to secure themselves against the internal 
disturbances to be expected from such an invasion. The in- 
vaders may not have had in the beginning any intention or 
desire to make themselves the rulers of the whole region, yet 
it soon became evident that they would endeavour to sweep 
away from their path any obstacles the existing systems 
might set up. The rulers and people of the Transvaal Repub- 
lic were determined, so far as they could, to manage their 
State according to their own ideas. The new-comers were 
equally determined to secure a free way for the promotion of 
the principal objects which they had in view when they sought 
for a settlement in South Africa. The settlers were called the 
Outlanders, the Anglicized version of the Dutch name of Uit- 
landers. The Outlanders claimed the right to be admitted 
at once as citizens of the Republic, and to have a voice and 
vote in its affairs. These demands were resisted by the Gov- 
ernment of the Republic. Lord Rosmead, the British Gov- 
ernor of Gape Golony and High Commissioner for South Africa, 
had done his best to bring about mutual conciliation and agree- 
ment, but he had not been able, during his term of office, to 
carry out his wishes to any practical result. Sir Alfred Milner 
was appointed by the English Government to succeed Lord 
Rosmead, and the appointment was welcomed with much 
gratification by all the British settlers in that region and by 
many of the public at home. Sir Alfred Milner was a man of 
great ability and energy, as he had proved during the appoint- 
ments he had held in Egypt under the British Government. 
His was a forward policy; his ambition was to make the in- 
fluence of his Sovereign and his country supreme in South 
Africa. The Outlanders accepted him from the first as the 
man to whose leadership they could safely confide their de- 
mands. The question of franchise in the Transvaal -became 
a primary object of negotiation. President Kruger had suc- 
seeded in passing a law requiring a seven years' prospective 



534 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. XL. 

and retrospective residence as the condition necessary for the 
admission of Outlanders to the privilege of voting as citizens 
of the Republic. These conditions were considered altogether 
unsatisfactory by Sir Alfred Milner, by Mr. Chamberlain, the 
Colonial Secretary, and by the Government at home. In 
every State there are conditions for the admission of foreign 
settlers to the rights of citizenship, one of which is a certain 
term of residence in the State. President Kruger's terms were 
undoubtedly severe and exclusive. Many negotiations took 
place, and at one period Kruger showed willingness to make 
some reductions in his terms, but in the end he would make no 
concession which Sir Alfred Milner could accept. There were 
difficulties also with regard to the nature of the suzerainty 
which England was entitled to exercise over the Transvaal 
Republic. The Imperialistic doctrine was already a control- 
ling power in English political life. There were two parties, 
the Imperialists being by far the more numerous and influen- 
tial. The other party was branded b} r its opponents with the 
contemptuous nickname of 'Little Englanders.' The Little 
Englander was characterised as a narrow-minded and un- 
patriotic personage, who had no soul for the extension of the 
British Empire. Early in September the Transvaal Govern- 
ment finally withdrew the somewhat qualified proposal it had 
made for a five years' term of franchise, and returned to Presi- 
dent Kruger's former stipulation for a residence of seven years. 
Then the Colonial Office issued a formal despatch demanding 
a five years' franchise, a proportion of representation for the 
gold-fields, and the equality of English and Dutch in the Trans- 
vaal Parliament. At last the Transvaal Government sent in 
an ultimatum announcing its definite terms, offering to sub- 
mit to the arbitration of some foreign State — a condition 
which the English Government had already refused to accept 
on the ground that the Transvaal was under English suze- 
rainty. The ultimatum called for the withdrawal, within a 
defined limit of time, of British troops from all places on the 
border of the Republic, and gave only a few days for Eng- 
land's reply. This was an ultimatum of the acceptance of 
which Kruger could have had no hope. There was clearly an 
end to all negotiations, and on October 12, 1899, war was de- 
clared. 

England was entering on a thoroughly popular war. A long 
time had passed since that description could be given to any 
war at its opening which English statesmanship had voluntarily, 
undertaken. It seldom happens that the British public feel 
any enthusiasm about a remote war in its opening chapters. 



CH. XL. THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR. 535 

Some of these warlike enterprises afterwards become thor- 
oughly popular with Englishmen at home, because of the gal- 
lantry with which they had been carried on, and the courage 
and perseverance shown by England's soldiers in the presence 
of tremendous difficulties caused by the climate as well as by 
the enemy. Under such conditions it becomes easy for the 
English public to believe that the policy of the British states- 
man who undertook the war was patriotic and just. 

But the conditions were entirety different in the case of the 
South African war. The attention of the public had long 
been fixed on the conflict of opposing interests in the neigh- 
bourhood of Cape Colony. There had been already a fierce 
struggle between the British forces and the Transvaal Repub- 
lic, and the story of Majuba Hill had filled a large number of 
Englishmen with a longing for a national revenge on the 
Boers. There were not many in England who did not feel 
assured that the whole struggle would be short, sharp, and 
decisive. The war, therefore, began with the full approval of 
the great majority in England, and no one who was not in the 
secret counsels of the War Office could have known how in- 
effective and insufficient were the preparations made by the 
Administration to carry it to a quick success. Shortly after 
the final rejection of the conditions offered by President 
Kruger the Boer forces invaded Natal. It soon became ap- 
parent that the Boers, however limited their numbers, were 
well prepared for the war, and that they were animated by a 
spirit of desperate resistance. General Sir Redvers Buller 
arrived in Natal on November 25, 1899. In December, Lord 
Roberts, who had rendered brilliant services on many a hard- 
fought field, was appointed Commander-in-Chief in South 
Africa, with Lord Kitchener as his Chief of the Staff; Sir Red- 
vers Buller remained in command of the Natal Army, Sir 
Charles Warren leading the Fifth Division under him. It had 
now become well known to the English public that the strug- 
gle was to be serious and prolonged. The enthusiasm only 
rose higher and higher as actual events began to prove that 
the final success was not to be accomplished without heavy 
losses, daring adventures, and tremendous sacrifice. As week 
after week passed it became apparent that the British Admin- 
istration had made no adequate provision for so peculiar a 
struggle, and the time lost in the despatch of necessary rein- 
forcements, the seas and the land to be traversed by each 
fresh body of troops sent out to the help of those already en- 
gaged in battle, were enough to give an enormous advantage 
to Kruger and his allies of the Orange Free State. There was, 

35 



536 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch„ XL. 

to begin with, the fact that Dutch Boers were thoroughly 
familiar with the region covered by their fight, knew where to 
retreat promptly and safely whenever a sudden retreat be- 
came advisable, and how to emerge again in the rapidest man- 
ner from some wholly unsuspected vantage-ground, and thus 
to keep on puzzling the British troops as much by their re- 
treats as by their attacks. Moreover, the Boers were men 
trained from their early boyhood to just that kind of work 
which came to be of the highest advantage to them in their 
encounters with the English troops. The Boers had to make 
their living in great measure by the pursuit of game, and every 
man was trained to the use of the rifle and to the most effec- 
tive manner of making it do its work with deadly certainty 
under whatever conditions of sudden surprise. The English 
force, on the other hand, was made up to a great extent of 
new levies, young men to whom the business of soldiering, 
even on British soil, was a novelty, and who had to go through 
an entirety new sort of training when they were to encounter 
the Dutch Boers in South Africa. Even those in England 
who utterly condemned the policy of the war became filled 
with admiration for the manner in which the British troops 
bore themselves during the whole of that long and fitful cam- 
paign. When a body of English troops, sent to the relief of 
some English encampment, had to journey over hundreds of 
miles of mountainous and waste country, to cross rivers and 
swamps and wide noxious regions in order to reach the place 
to be relieved, it is not surprising that many disasters, and, for 
the time, many failures, had to be recorded. The Boers were 
often the invaders as well as the invaded, and our Generals 
had to look after the safety of Cape Colony and also to see 
to the occupation of Boer territory. England had often been 
engaged in wars involving far more momentous issues. Yet 
the feelings of the English people were aroused to a state of 
impatience and passionate emotion such as had never been 
exhibited during the Crimean War, or the Indian Mutiny, in 
which a failure on the part of the English armies might have 
led to an overwhelming national disaster. England sent to 
South Africa during the whole of the war about 450,000 men. 
Of these nearly 340,000 came from home ; the remaining num- 
bers were sent from India and from the Colonies, and raised 
in South Africa itself. The total of the Boer force brought 
into the field was rather less than 75,000 men. Thus it will 
be seen how overwhelming was the superiority of the invad- 
ing forces in numbers and in supplies, and that the question 
at issue was merely how soon the Boers could be taught to 



CH. XL. THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 537 

feel that further resistance was useless. Had the English Ad- 
ministration taken proper account of the serious resistance 
the Dutch were likely to offer, and made due and proper prep- 
arations accordingly, the war might have been brought to an 
end much sooner, and with far less sacrifice of the invading 
English troops. It is not our intention to go through in de- 
tail the whole record of this three j^ears' war. It is a story, 
on both sides, of brilliant attack and brilliant defence, of 
battles and sieges, all belonging to the same struggle, but some 
as far removed from others as if they were taking place at the 
two extremes of the European Continent. The Dutch under 
all conditions were compelled to make it a sort of guerilla war- 
fare, with sudden surprises here and sudden retreats there, 
and the English on their part were compelled to give them- 
selves up to that same manner of campaigning and to train 
themselves in the art of outdoing the Boer fighters in guerilla 
warfare. For three long years the English people had to read 
the reports of encounters in the open field, of places besieged 
and places relieved, of camps broken up and strongholds taken 
by storm, most of which would have been but ordinary events 
in the progress of a great European war. One of the British 
successes which created the highest enthusiasm in England 
was the relief of Mafeking — the very name of Mafeking sup- 
plied a new slang phrase in our vocabulary to characterise 
popular and patriotic enthusiasm, not always used in a lauda- 
tory and sympathetic sense. 

The first definite event indicating that the close of the 
struggle might soon be counted on was the annexation of the 
Orange Free State. This annexation was proclaimed on May 
28, 1900, and the conquered region was described under the 
name of Orange River Colony. At the end of the same month 
President Kruger accomplished his flight from Pretoria, and 
Lord Roberts entered Pretoria and hoisted the British flag 
there on June 5. Yet the war was by no means at an end. 
It was now almost altogether a guerilla warfare on the side 
of the Dutch and the Orange Free State, and such a war might 
be carried on for an almost indefinite time, even after all the 
strongholds of the invaded States had been occupied by the 
enemy. But the English Commanders were now becoming 
better acquainted with the Boer tactics and could see that by 
continually pressing the Boers into collisions here, there, and 
everywhere, with English troops, the superior numbers must 
soon prove their superiority, and leave the Transvaal and the 
Orange Free State without any supply of fighting men worth 
counting on. The truth was forced upon the minds of the 



538 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. XL. 

Transvaal and the Orange Free State Commanders, and even 
if President Kruger had been inclined to keep on the resistance 
until the fighting power of the Transvaal had been utterly- 
exhausted, he was now out of the way, and his authority had 
lost its control. A Peace Conference was held on May 15 and 
16, 1902, in which some of the Transvaal commanders, includ- 
ing Louis Botha and De Wet, each of them among the most 
distinguished fighters and tacticians on the Transvaal side, 
came into consultation with Lord Milner and Lord Kitchener 
in Pretoria. The British terms were unconditional surrender 
and absorption of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State 
into the British Empire. There were some very liberal con- 
ditions of surrender offered by the conquerors. There was 
to be no death penalty inflicted on any of the Boers who had 
been fighting for their country, the Dutch language was to be 
used in law courts whenever necessary, and there was to be a 
liberial Imperial grant with some loans to enable the Boers 
to settle once again in the land which they had made their 
home. These terms were accepted and signed by the repre- 
sentatives of the Boer cause in the presence of Lord Milner and 
Lord Kitchener at Pretoria. Lord Kitchener congratulated 
the Boers on the gallant struggle they had made, and offered 
them his welcome in their position as citizens of the great 
British Empire. A cordial feeling prevailed on both sides, 
and while the terms of surrender were still going on many of 
the Boer leaders made speeches in which they expressed their 
loyal willingness to accept terms of peace and to recognise the 
supremacy of the British Sovereign. Finally, Lord Kitchener 
sailed for England on June 23, 1902, and the three years' war 
was at an end. 

An event in the war to be remembered with grateful feeling 
on both sides was the noble expedition made by a committee 
of ladies, under the guidance of Mrs. Henry Fawcett, to visit 
the refuge camps in South Africa, and lend the best help they 
could for the reduction of the fearful mortality among Boer 
women and children. During all modern wars in which the 
British Empire has been engaged, British women have thus 
shown themselves ready to perform these corporal works of 
mercy, but the service rendered by the committee of ladies 
in South Africa was especially difficult and troublesome, be- 
cause of the distances to be traversed and the unusual discom- 
forts and dangers to be endured. This mission of charity may 
be justly regarded as bequeathing to English history one of 
the most touching and gratifying memories associated with 
the storj'' of the South African war. 



CH. XL. THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR. 539 

Little apology will be needed on the part of the author for 
the fact that he has thought it well to anticipate the course 
of history in dealing with the final settlement of the war. This 
1 Short History of Our Own Times ' only professes to bring the 
narrative down to the close of Queen Victoria's reign, and that 
close had been reached and a new Sovereign, King Edward 
VII., had come to the British throne before the first serious 
attempts were made to bring the long struggle to an end. But 
as the war began, and was for a long time carried on, during 
the reign of Queen Victoria, the author has anticipated events 
in order that the readers of this volume might have the whole 
story before them. As to the policy of the war, there must 
always be a large number of educated Englishmen who believe 
that England made a mistake when she set deliberately to 
work for the crushing of the two South African Republics. 
Even if we put aside altogether the theory maintained by so 
many Englishmen of high intellect and true patriotic feeling 
that the war was forced upon this country by the supporters 
of the capitalist and mining interests, and by the advocates of 
that inflated Imperialism who hailed any extension of British 
territory, no matter how acquired, as a new glory for England, 
it must always be held by men whose opinions ought to claim 
respect that England, in undertaking the South African war, 
renewed an evil example to the rulers of great empires. The 
best that can now be hoped for is that the results may yet be 
reached which some of us believe could have been brought 
about without the terrible risks and sacrifices of war. 



CHAPTER XLI. 

EVENTS AT HOME AND ABROAD. 

Soon after the close of the Session of 1900 the constituencies 
began to be closely interested in the probability of an early 
Dissolution. The Parliament then sitting might still have had 
a year or more of life before it became legally necessary for it 
to withdraw from existence, but it was understood through- 
out the country that the Government had many critical ques- 
tions to deal with at home and abroad, and that the statesmen 
in office desired, at the earliest possible moment, a decisive 
expression of public opinion on some of the more pressing 
questions. There was also a common impression that the 
Government was especially anxious to take the opinion of the 



540 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. xli. 

country on the South African war while it was still going on, 
and while any hesitation in giving support to those who were 
responsible for it might seem unpatriotic conduct, amounting 
to the actual withdrawal of support from the British army 
while it was yet engaged in the struggle on South African 
battle-fields. 

The strength and union of the Liberal party had undergone 
much damaging change since the days when Mr. Gladstone 
held office for the last time. It was not certain whether Lord 
Rosebery and those who acted with him were genuine Liberals, 
and there were sections of the Parliamentary Opposition who 
did not even profess fully to accept Gladstonian Liberalism. 
On September 18, 1900, the London Gazette contained the 
formal announcement of Dissolution. The results of the Gen- 
eral Election were substantially just what the country had 
anticipated. There were 334 Conservatives and 68 Liberal 
Unionists elected, making together a Ministerial party of 402 
members. The Liberal and the Labour members numbered 
186, and the Irish Nationalists 82 members. The Irish Na- 
tionalists could not be regarded as pledged adherents to the 
Liberal Opposition, except on the single question of Home 
Rule, and they were ready to give their support to any Gov- 
ernment, Liberal or Conservative, which could satisfy them in 
legislation dealing with Irish affairs. The result of the elec- 
tions was, therefore, to give the Conservative party a very 
large and substantial majority — larger, indeed, and more co- 
hesive than in the former Parliament. Lord Salisbury re- 
turned to power as Prime Minister and Lord Privy Seal. The 
Duke of Devonshire was Lord President of the Council; Sir 
Michael Hicks -Beach, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Mr. 
Chamberlain returned to his old position of Colonial Secretary, 
and Mr. Balfour became First Lord of the Treasury and Lead- 
er of the House of Commons. Mr. Ritchie was appointed 
Home Secretary; the Marquis of Lansdowne, Foreign Secre- 
tary; the Earl of Selborne, First Lord of the Admiralty; and 
Mr. Gerald Balfour, brother of Mr. Arthur Balfour, President 
of the Board of Trade. The new Parliament opened on De- 
cember 3, 1900, and Mr. Gully was once again elected Speaker 
of the House of Commons. Four conspicuous members of 
Lord Salisbury's former Cabinet were not in the new Ministry. 
One of these was Viscount Cross, who had held some of the 
highest Ministerial offices, and was indeed one of the most 
hard-working and influential Conservative statesmen. He had 
reached the age of seventy-seven, and he had given his ad- 
vanced years as a reason why he should not any longer under- 



CH. xli. EVENTS AT HOME AXD ABROAD. 541 

take the fatigue of office. Mr. Goschen, First Lord of the 
Admiralty, had also made it known to Lord Salisbury that he 
did not intend to resume office. At the Dissolution he an- 
nounced to his constituents that he did not intend to seek re- 
election to the House of Commons. Everyone felt sure that 
Mr. Goschen 's long and valuable services would be rewarded 
by a Peerage, and that, entering the House of Lords, he would 
remain in the Conservative Administration. But Lord Go- 
schen, as he was to be, had resolved upon retirement from offi- 
cial life as well as from the House of Commons, and he held 
to his resolution. He has often borne distinct and influential 
part in the debates of the House of Lords, and was emphati- 
cally one of the Peers to whose declaration of opinion the outer 
world turns with interest and respect. Sir Matthew White 
Ridley, another retiring Minister, was only fifty-eight at the 
time of the General Election, and it was expected that his 
name would be announced as holding office in the new Con- 
servative Government. He did not, however, return to 
office. A Peerage was conferred on him, and he entered the 
House of Lords as Viscount Ridley. Mr. Henry Chaplin, who 
had been President of the Local Government Board, did not 
return to office. The explanation accepted by the political 
world with regard to Mr. Chaplin's disappearance from office, 
as well as of that of Sir Matthew Ridley, was that Lord Salis- 
bury, having to make openings for rising men, relied on the 
good-fellowship of some among his former colleagues to help 
him by withdrawing all claims of their own. 

The new Parliament had lost for the time some figures which 
were conspicuous in the House of Commons during former 
Parliaments. Sir George Otto Trevelyan had retired in 1S97, 
and did not re-enter the House. Mr. Leonard Courtney did 
not reappear in the new House of Commons. A scholar, an 
author, a journalist, he had almost immediately on his first 
entering the House won for himself a high reputation as a 
parliamentary debater, and had held many high offices in 
Liberal administrations. There was a feeling of profound dis- 
appointment in the House, and throughout the country, when 
it was found that Mr. Courtney's opposition to the policy pur- 
sued with regard to South Africa had ended in his temporary 
withdrawal from Parliament. Two of the most rising among 
the members of the former Parliament not re-elected to the 
new House of Commons were Mr. Philip Stanhope and Mr. 
Augustine Birrell. It was understood that Mr. Stanhope and 
Mr. Birrell had lost their seats because they had steadily op- 
posed the war policy of the Government in South Africa, 



542 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OV/N TIMES, ch. XLI. 

On August 2, 1900, Mr. Balfour informed the House of Com- 
mons that Her Majesty's Government had felt compelled to 
send a despatch to the Belgian Government of a most remark- 
able character, and dealing with an extraordinary event — the 
attempt made on April 4, 1900, at the Nord Station in Brussels, 
to kill the Prince of Wales. The Prince had left England for 
a visit to Copenhagen. When he was passing through Brus- 
sels, and just when the train was leaving the station, a youth 
named Sipido, aged fifteen, jumped on to the foot-board of the 
carriage in which the Prince sat, and fired from a revolver 
four times. The revolver twice failed to send forth any bullet, 
but in a moment after it sent out two bullets, each of which 
passed very close to the Prince. The Prince retained his 
composure perfectly, and when a crowd on the platform gath- 
ered round Sipido and seized him, the Prince called to them 
and ordered them not to do any harm to the boy. Then the 
train moved on, and Sipido was made a prisoner. The would- 
be regicide was found to be the son of respectable parents, 
and had been earning his living in a reputable way. But he 
had lately joined a secret political club especially hostile to 
British influence, and he had got it into his head that it was 
his duty to put to death the Prince of Wales, because the 
Prince had been an accomplice of Mr. Chamberlain 'in pro- 
moting the slaughter of the South African Boers.' Sipido was 
proved to have been during his later days irresponsible for his 
actions. It may be questioned whether Sipido had not been 
guilty of a blunder as well as of a crime, for the political reader 
might find good reason to doubt whether the policy which 
forced on the South African war had ever been favoured or 
encouraged by the Prince of Wales. Sipido, after his arrest, 
was put on trial at Brussels, along with three other boys, on 
July 2. The trial lasted three days, and the jury found Sipido 
guilty of the offence, with a qualification as to his mental con- 
dition. The court finally acquitted him on account of his 
irresponsibility, but ordered his detention in prison until the 
age of twent3^-one. The other boys were acquitted. Soon 
afterwards he managed to get out of the country, and arrived 
in Paris, where he lived under the care of his uncle. The de- 
spatch to the Belgian Government, of which Mr. Balfour in- 
formed the House of Commons, declared that the Queen's 
Ministers considered the result of the Sipido trial to be a grave 
miscarriage of justice, and expressed their surprise and regret 
that the Belgian Government did not take proper precautions 
to retain Sipido in custody until some decision had been come 
to as to the course to be taken with regard to him, Sipido 



ch. xli. EVENTS AT HOME AND ABROAD. 543 

was again arrested, and it may be assumed that this time the 
Belgian authorities adopted means to ensure that so danger- 
ous a person, whether morally guilty or not, should not be at 
large. 

An event of the last years of the Queen's reign was the 
assassination of the Empress of Austria, in September, 1898, 
while she was on her way from Geneva to Montreux. As she 
was walking from the hotel to the steamer an Italian anarchist, 
named Lucchini, suddenly stabbed her with a very small but 
keen stiletto, and she died almost immediately. The Empress 
had been one of the most popular Sovereigns of her time. 
She was the daughter of Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria, and 
was married, in 1854, to her cousin Francis Joseph, Emperor 
of Austria and King of Hungary. After the tragic death of 
her only son, the Crown-Prince Rudolph, in 1889, she resided 
less and less in Vienna, spending much of her time in the 
South of Europe. 

The assassin, who was only twenty-five, was a member of 
a body of Italian anarchists, and he seems to have had no rea- 
son for committing the murder beyond the wish of certain 
anarchists to take the life of any sovereign. He was im- 
prisoned for life, there being no capital punishment in that 
Canton of Switzerland. 

King Humbert of Italy was killed by an assassin in July, 
1900. He had been distributing prizes at the Monza Athletic 
Club, and when entering his carriage to return to the Palace 
he was shot by a man named Bresci. The bullet struck the 
King near his heart, and he died before his carriage had reach- 
ed the Palace. There had been a former attempt on his life 
in 1879, but he was on that occasion saved by his Prime Min- 
ister, Count Cairoli, who flung himself between the King and 
the assassin; another attempt was made in 1897, but was also 
prevented. 

The years following the celebration of the Queen's Diamond 
Jubilee, in which so many momentous events disturbed the 
political world at home and abroad, were also years of much 
interest to literature, art, and science. The great discovery 
made by Wilhelm Konrad von Rontgen, of the existence and 
capacities of what are now called the Rontgen rays, which has 
opened up an entirely new chapter in the history of medical 
and surgical science, first came to be appreciated in this coun- 
try during 1897. One of the most marvellous achievements 
of applied science is the system of the wireless telegraph, the 
practical application of which is mainly due to Guglielmo 
Marconi, who, in 1896, visited London and found a ready 



544 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xli. 

hearing there from men engaged in practical science. His ap- 
paratus was put to the test, and was declared to be a complete 
success so far as it was tried. Sir W. H. Preece had, in 1879, 
made known to the Royal Institution a system of his own de- 
vice for the purpose of signalling through space without wire 
by means of electro-magnetic waves of low frequency, and 
parallel circuits established on each bank of a river. This 
system had already been put in practice by Sir William Preece 
in telegraphing across some of our harbours. He was one of 
those who at once understood and encouraged the experiments 
of Marconi when the young Italian came over to try his chances 
in England. The first press message sent by Marconi's system 
passed from Boulogne to the English shore. It was soon 
proved by demonstration that the Marconi system could send 
messages across the Atlantic, and enable England to com- 
municate with the United States or Canada without the aid 
of any electric wire, across a distance which it would be im- 
possible to traverse above the sea by any wire capable of stand- 
ing the shock of the winds. The most surprising developments 
of the Marconi process only came into action after the reign 
of Victoria had drawn to its close, but its principle was estab- 
lished during her reign; and it therefore comes within the 
range of this history. Meanwhile the telephone was fixing 
its connecting links almost everywhere throughout cities and 
towns, and in this way, at least, time and space were brought 
as near to annihilation as they could be. 

In 1897 England's national collections of art were enriched 
by the magnificent paintings and other art treasures known 
as the Wallace Collection. These had belonged to the Marquis 
of Hertford, by whom they were left to Richard Wallace, a 
man well known for his active and generous philanthropy, who 
had been created a Baronet by the Queen because of the chari- 
table services he had rendered during the siege of Paris in 1871. 
Wallace died in 1890, and in 1897 his widow, when dying, 
carried out the wish of her late husband by bequeathing his 
whole collection to the nation, the only condition being that 
the collection should be kept distinct from all others. A Com- 
mittee formed to carry out her desire recommended that Hert- 
ford House, Manchester Square, should be bought for the 
purpose, and this building was converted into an Art Gallery 
for the reception and exhibition of this splendid bequest, the 
value of which was estimated at upwards of three millions 
sterling. The Tate Gallery was opened in the same year by 
the Prince of Wales. The collection was the bequest of Mr. 
Henry Tate, and was chiefly composed of the works of British 



CH. XLI. EVENTS AT HOME AND ABROAD. 545 

masters, living or dead. Its management was placed in the 
hands of the trustees of the National Gallery, and the gallery 
which was to contain it was built on the site of the old Mill- 
bank prison on the Embankment. It is known as the Tate 
Gallery. 



CHAPTER XLII. 

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN. 

On January 1, 1901, took place the inauguration of the new 
Australian Commonwealth, an event which might be regarded 
as something like the opening of a new world in the southern 
hemisphere. Queen Victoria despatched at once a message to 
Lord Hopetoun, the first Governor-General of the new Colony, 
expressing her heartfelt interest in this expansion of Australia, 
and her earnest wish that it might ensure the increased pros- 
perity and well-being of her loyal subjects there. A deep and 
melancholy interest must always attach in history to that 
message from the Queen. 

On January 2, Lord Roberts reached England from South 
Africa, and his welcome in this country was one of intense 
enthusiasm. Lord Roberts took over the work of Commander- 
in-Chief here, and Lord Kitchener succeeded him in command 
of the troops in South Africa. The Queen was especially anx- 
ious to receive from Lord Roberts himself the fullest and clear- 
est exposition of the war, its progress, and the prospects of its 
termination. There were many around Her Majesty who felt 
grave doubts as to whether, in the state of her health at the 
time, it would be well for her to enter upon a prolonged con- 
versation on that anxious and still difficult subject. For it 
had already been made known to the Queen's family that her 
health was not what her people and the civilised world in 
general would have wished it to be, and that she was already 
showing many signs of an ominous cerebral affection. But 
the Queen firmly declared that she would see Lord Roberts, 
and learn fully from him the present state and the prospects 
of the South African campaign. 

The public mind now began to be seriously alarmed by the 
rumours which were heard as to the state of the Queen's health. 
The Queen had through her long life been subject more than 
once to severe illnesses, and there had been times when the 
gravest fears existed as to the possibility of her reign coming 
to a sudden conclusion. This time the public alarm appeared 



546 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH« xlii. 

to be even more intense and more widely spread. How close- 
ly she could still pay attention to any event in her kingdom 
calling for her sympathy and beneficence was made manifest 
by the fact that she sent a sympathetic message and a gift of 
money to the survivors of a disaster which had befallen the 
fishing fleet of Shetland. Another event showed with equal 
vividness how far she was from allowing herself to be wholly 
absorbed by her own physical danger. On January 14, Dr. 
Creighton, Bishop of London, died at a comparatively early 
age, and immediately after his death it was announced to 
the public that Dr. Creighton 's widow had received a mes- 
sage of sympathy from Princess Christian on behalf of the 
Sovereign. But on the evening after the issue of this mes- 
sage the first note of alarm was sounded, for the world in gen- 
eral, by an official announcement in the Court Circular pro- 
claiming that it had been thought advisable by Her Majesty's 
physicians that the Queen should be kept perfectly quiet in 
the house, and should abstain for the present from transacting 
business. On Sunday, January 20, it was made known by the 
Queen's physician that the Sovereign's condition had become 
more serious, with increased weakness and diminished power 
of taking nourishment. In every place of worship throughout 
the whole kingdom the most earnest prayers were put up for 
the Queen's restoration to health — prayers which were rather 
the anticipations of the coming national sorrow than the yet 
hopeful entreaties that the country might be spared so heavy 
a trial. The foreign press also had already begun to bear 
testimony to the intense regard felt for the Queen through all 
civilised nations, and the earnest, although clouded, hope that 
her life even yet might be spared. The German Emperor, who 
was then engaged in the public celebration of the Prussian 
monarchy's 200th anniversary, brought the ceremonials to a 
sudden end, and travelled at the most rapid rate possible in 
order that he might reach Osborne in time to see his royal 
grandmother before the end came. Messages expressive of the 
deepest sympathy kept constantly pouring in by telegraphic 
wire from eminent men and women in all parts of the United 
States. On Tuesday, January 22, the Queen in the earlier 
part of the" day awoke to full consciousness and recognised 
each of the members of her family, the German Emperor 
among them, who were watching by her bedside. She seemed 
to be of perfectly peaceful mind, and to understand the reality 
of her condition. She was awaiting her fate in humble resigna- 
tion. It may well be assumed that, like the noble lady in 
Webster's immortal tragedy, she knew that the gates of 



CH. xlii. THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN. 547 

heaven are not so highly arched as those of princes' palaces, 
and that mortals must kneel — must kneel in spirit — who 
would enter there. At four o'clock in that afternoon it was 
announced that the Queen was sinking fast, and at half-past 
six in the evening the reign of Queen Victoria came to an 
end. 

Queen Victoria was a Sovereign whose life bore no resem- 
blance to the life of any of her predecessors in the dynasty. 
No Sovereign could have led a life more truly free from blame 
throughout all her domestic career, and she had never, as 
other Sovereigns of the dynasty had done before her, put her- 
self at the head of any political party, and thus caused an op- 
position to her in the minds of this or that section of her 
subjects. She had been a model as a wife and mother, and 
perhaps the one only fault which her subjects were inclined 
to find with her was that because of her absolute devotion 
to her lost husband she had withdrawn herself too much into 
seclusion; but even for this deliberate retirement full excuse 
was readily made by most of her people. Queen Victoria had 
performed most faithfully and most judiciously her part as a 
constitutional Sovereign. She never attempted to overrule 
her Ministers, but she always insisted on being thoroughly 
informed as to their purposes and their policy, and she never 
failed to make her own opinions clearly known to the states- 
men over whom she presided. She was the first constitutional 
Sovereign of England. The coffin which contained the re- 
mains of the Queen was carried from Osborne to the Royal 
yacht Alberta on February 1, 1901. On the early morning of 
the following day the yacht entered Portsmouth harbour, which 
was crowded with English and foreign vessels of war. 

One of the last wishes expressed by the Queen was that 
her coffin might be borne on a gun-carriage, for the reason 
that she was a soldier's daughter, and that it would therefore 
be symbolic of her birth and family. The horses attached to 
the gun-carriage became restive in consequence of the neces- 
sary period of delay, and resisted all efforts to make them ac- 
complish their work. The idea suddenly occurred to one of 
the officers to remove the horses and allow the sailors who 
composed the guard of honour to draw the carriage. The 
whole incident made a deep impression on the public, and was 
held to be well in keeping with the pageantry of the funeral. 
Three gun-carriages had to be used during the procession, 
and they were afterwards presented to Chelsea Hospital, to 
the City of Edinburgh, and to the City of Dublin. The funeral 
procession as it passed from Victoria to Paddington through 



548 A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, ch. xlii. 

the crowded streets was gazed upon by silent and reverent 
crowds. 

The Queen's eldest son, now already King, with the Ger- 
man Emperor and the Duke of Connaught, led the procession. 
The King of the Belgians, the King of Portugal, and the King 
of Greece had conspicuous places, and the near relatives of 
many other Sovereigns represented their courts and their 
peoples. The Royal coffin was then carried to St. George's 
Chapel, Windsor, where the first part of the burial service was 
solemnised; it was then removed to the Albert Memorial 
Chapel and placed in front of the altar, where it was watched 
through the night by officers of the 1st Grenadier Guards and 
men of the Queen's Company. Next day, after a short final 
service, the coffin was laid in earth in the Royal Mausoleum 
at Frogmore. 

In the afternoon of Wednesday, January 23, the Privy Coun- 
cil met at St. James's Palace to make formal announcement 
of the change which had taken place in the sovereignty of the 
Empire. The Duke of Devonshire, as Lord President of the 
Council, announced the death of Queen Victoria, and the 
accession of her elder son to the throne. The King had al- 
ready arrived from Osborne and had gone to St. James's 
Palace, where he remained until he received the announcement 
of the ceremonial at the meeting of the Privy Council. King 
Edward was then conducted to the room where the Privy 
Councillors were awaiting his presence, and there delivered 
the address which was to be his first announcement of his 
accession to the throne and of his resolve to do his best for 
the full discharge of his duties to the Empire. 'I know,' he 
said, 'how deeply you, the whole nation, and I think I may 
say the whole civilised world, sympathise with me in the ir- 
reparable loss we have all sustained. I need hardly say that 
my constant endeavour will be always to walk in her foot- 
steps. In undertaking the heavy duty which now devolves 
upon me, I am fully determined to be a constitutional Sover- 
eign in the strictest sense of the word, and as long as there is 
breath in my body to work for the good and amelioration of 
my people.' The King then announced his resolve to be 
known by the name of Edward, which had been borne by six 
of his ancestors. ' In doing so, I do not undervalue the name 
of Albert, which I inherit from my ever to be honoured, great, 
and wise father, who by universal consent is deservedly known 
by the name of Albert the Good, and I desire that his name 
should stand alone.' Then the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hals- 
bury, administered to the King the oath by which the new 



CH. xlii. THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN. 549 

Sovereign bound himself to govern the realm according to its 
own laws and customs, and King Edward added the assurance 
of his full reliance on the wisdom of Parliament and the loyalty 
and affection of his people. 

On January 25 the Houses of Parliament met to receive the 
Royal message from King Edward. In the House of Lords, 
Lord Salisbury, as the Leader of the Government, and Lord 
Kimberley, as Leader of the Opposition, delivered speeches 
which told of the profound national regret felt for the loss of 
Queen Victoria, and expressed loyal hope and trust for the 
new reign which had just begun. The Archbishop, as spiritual 
head of the Church, spoke to the same effect, and invoked a 
blessing on the new ruler. In the House of Commons speeches 
were delivered by Mr. Arthur Balfour, the Leader of the House, 
and by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Leader of the Opposi- 
tion. The members of both the Parliamentary Chambers then 
took the oath of allegiance to King Edward. 

There was some controversy at this time with regard to the 
terms of the Coronation Oath which has been taken by all 
our Sovereigns since the passing of the Act of Settlement. 
The oath contains words repudiating the doctrines of the 
Church of Rome, and these words were objectionable to the 
King's Catholic subjects, both in Great Britain and in Ireland, 
and it was generally believed that the King himself had no 
wish to retain in the oath any words which could offend a 
large proportion of his subjects. The question of some change 
in them had already been discussed, but there seemed to be 
some difficulty about making a definite change just then, and 
the subject was allowed to stand over for another Session. 

The Royal Coronation had to be postponed, owing to the 
King's severe and dangerous illness, for a considerable time 
beyond the time appointed, and so the whole question of the 
Coronation Oath was allowed to remain open for future con- 
sideration, and the fullest hope was felt that the terms of the 
oath might be made suitable to the changes which had taken 
place in legislation and public feeling, and to the recognition 
in State ceremonial of the principle of religious equality. 

The King opened in person his first Session of Parliament in 
February, 1901, and 'delivered the Speech from the Throne in 
full, clear tones, audible through all the benches and galleries 
of the House of Lords. Queen Alexandra occupied a seat on 
a throne placed next to that of the King.' The new reign had 
now begun; and here this 'Short History' comes to an end. 



INDEX. 



ABD 

ABD-EL-KADER, saves Chris- 
tians in Damascus, 237. 

Abdul-Aziz in England, 327-28. 

Aberdeen, Lady, 512. 

Aberdeen, Lord, Foreign Secre- 
tary, 31; and Pacifico case, 
97; Prime Minister Coalition 
Ministry, 1852, 128; conversa- 
tions with Czar Nicholas, 136; 
dislike of war, 146; and Cri- 
mean War, 162; tribute to 
Salvation Army, 525. 

Aborigines Protection Society 
and Jamaica question, 282. 

Abyssinian war, 334-39. 

Acre, bombardment of, 30. 

Adams and Alabama, 247; and 
recognition of South meaning 
war, 248-49. 

Adullamites, the, 291 ; and Lord 
Derby, 294. 

Afghanistan, war in, 1841-42, 
44-57; war in, 425-26; troub- 
les in, 435. 

Afghans in Sikh war, 175. 

Agricultural labourer, the, 383- 
86. 

Akbar Khan, son of Dost Mo- 
hammed, 48; kills Macnaghten 
49; treating with English, 50; 
interview with Lady Mac- 
naghten, 52; defeated, 54. 

Alabama, Confederate privateer, 
246-48, 251; claims, 374-78. 

Alamayou, son of Theodore of 
Abyssinia, death of, 339. 

Albany, death of Duke of, 451. 

Alcester, Lord — see Seymour, 
Sir Beauchamp. 



ARN 

Alexander II. comes to Russian 
throne, 157; and Constanti- 
nople, 415. 

Alexandra, Princess, married to 
Prince of Wales, 258-59. 

Alexandria, bombardment of, 
441-42. 

Allen and Manchester rescue, 
317. 

Alma, battle of, 147-49. 

Alsace yielded to Germany, 372. 

America and Foreign Legion Act, 
161; and Congress of Paris, 
161; civil war in, 239-51; 
Alabama claims, 374-78. 

Andrassy Note, 411-12. 

Anne Queen, and Scotch Church, 
34. 

Annual Register, 465. 

Anson, advances on Delhi, 180. 

Anti-Corn Law League, 68; its 
leaders, 69-72; agitation of, 
72-75; conversion of Peel, 75- 
77; Disraeli's opposition, 78- 
84. 

Anti- Slavery Society and Ja- 
maica question, 282. 

Antonelli, sympathy with North, 
242. 

Arabi Pasha, 441-42. 

Arbitration, international, 517- 
18. 

Arch, Joseph, 384-86. 

Ardagh, Sir John, 516. 

ArgyU, Duke of, 278-79; India 
Office, 351. 

Army Reform, 461. 

Arnaud, St., and Crimea, 147; 
death of, 158,, 



552 



INDEX. 



ARN 



BOS 



Arnold-Forster, Mr., 471. 

Arrow, the Lorcha, 164-67. 

Artisans' Dwelling Bill, 404. 

Ashantee War, 253, 396-97. 

Ashburton Treaty, 66. 

Ashley, Lord — see Shaftesbury. 

Asquith, Mr., Home Secretary, 
458; on Education Bill, 524. 

Atlantic cable, 164; laid, 298-99. 

Auckland, Lord, and Dost Mo- 
hammed, 46; succeeded by 
Lord Ellenborough, 54. 

Australia, discovery of gold in, 
168; and transportation, 168. 

Australian Commonwealth, in- 
auguration of, 545. 

Australian Islands, the, 309-10. 

Austria, war with Prussia, men- 
tioned, 4; and Turkish war 
with Mohammed Ali, 30; Hun- 
garian rebellion, 113; Kos- 
suth in England, 114—15; war 
with France, 217-18, 221; and 
Polish insurrection, 255-56; 
war with Prussia, 298; war 
with Denmark, 357-60; Em- 
press of, assassinated, 543. 

Ayrton, Mr., unpopularity of, 
371. 

Azimoolah Khan, in England, 
183-84; makes terms with 
Cawnpore garrison, 186. 



BALAKLAVA, battle of, 150. 
Balfour, Arthur J., Chief 
Secretary for Ireland, 457; 
First Lord of the Treasury, 
467, 540; and Jameson raid, 
471; on death of Gladstone, 
478; Cuba, 504; Ritualism, 
507-08, 510; Local Govern- 
ment Bill, 522. 

Balfour, Gerald, 540. 

Ballot Bill of 1871, 368-70. 

Ballot, vote by, demanded by 
Chartists, 18. 

Bank Charter Act, 64. 

Baring, Mr., budget of, 30-31; 
and Bulgarian atrocities, 413. 



Baxter, Mr., resigns Secretary- 
ship, Treasury, 395. 

Beaconsfield — see Disraeli. 

Beale, James, advises Mill to 
stand for Westminster, 269. 

Beales, Mr. E., and Polish insur- 
rection, 255 ; and reform meet- 
ing, Hyde Park, 295-97. 

Bean, attempts life of Queen, 
43. 

Bedchamber question, the, 37- 
39. 

Bentinck, Lord George, forms 
protection part}', 82; and sug- 
ar duties, 87. 

Bentinck, Lord W., suppression 
of Suttee, 175. 

Berar, annexation of, 175. 

Berlin Memorandum, 412; 
Treaty of, 421-22. 

Bernard, Mr. M., and Alabama 
commission, 376. 

Bernard, Simon, accomplice of 
Orsini, trial of, 201, 204-05. 

Bessarabia ceded to Russia, 
422-23. 

Beyrout, massacre in, 237. 

Birmingham, Radical meeting 
in, in 1837, 16; Chartist riot 
in, 19; manufacture of Orsini 
bombs at, 201. 

Birrell, Augustine, 510. 

Bismarck and Schleswig-Hol- 
stein question, 257; and Black 
Sea clause, 373-74; Congress 
of Berlin, 420-21. 

Black Sea neutralised, 160; 
clause abrogated, 373-74. 

Blanc, Dr., Abyssinian prisoner, 
335, 337. 

Bokhara, Burnes's travels in, 
45; English prisoners in, 56- 
57. 

Booth, General, 526. 

Borough franchise and Mr. Glad- 
stone, 264. 

Bosnia, rising in, 410-11; and 
treaty of Berlin in, 422. 

Bosphortis, no foreign ship of 
war admitted into, 30; ques- 



INDEX. 



553 



BOS 



CAB 



tion of, 144-45; and Congress 
of Paris, 160. 

Bosquet, General, on Charge of 
Light Brigade, 150. 

Bourke, Mr., and Irish Univer- 
sity Bill, 393. 

Bowlby, Mr., murdered by Chi- 
nese, 235. 

Bowring, Sir John, and Lorcha 
Arrow, 165, 167. 

Boxers, 492-97. 

Bradlaugh, Charles, 432-33. 

Bramwell, Baron, and ticket-of- 
leave system, 169. 

Brand, Sir Henry, 448. 

Bright, John, and Anti-Corn Law 
League, 71, 72; on Irish 
famine, 74; and Ecclesiastical 
Titles Act, 103; and Peace 
Society, 146; unseated, 167, 
209; Disraeli's Reform Bill, 
219; and 'Fancy Franchises/ 
220; at Willis's Rooms, 221; 
and Palmerston Ministry, 224; 
and Lords on Paper Duty, 
229-30; and Alabama, 247; on 
Cobden's death, 267; and new 
Parliament, 1865, 271; and 
Adullamites, 291 ; and reform 
agitation, 1866, 295; and Dis- 
raeli's reform by resolution, 
300; on suspension Habeas 
Corpus in Ireland, 311; and 
Manchester prisoners, 317; 
and Irish State Church, 343- 
44; President, Board of Trade, 
350; Chancellor, Duchy of 
Lancaster, 395; and leader- 
ship, 405; and Bulgarian 
atrocities, 413; resigns, 443; 
attitude to Home Rule, 453. 

British Columbia, founded by 
Lytton, 215; and confedera- 
tion, 307. 

Broadhead and Sheffield out- 
rages, 319-21. 

Broadhurst, Henry, opposed to 
Lord Wolseley's pension, 444; 
career of, 484. 

Brodrick, Mr. St. John, 461. 



Brougham, Lord, character of, 
6-7; and sugar duties, 87; and 
Pacifico case, 97; opposes 
Great Exhibition, 107; and 
Jews, 210; death of, 348-49. 

Bruce, Frederick, and Chinese 
war, 1859-60, 233-35. 

Bruce, H. C, in Gladstone 
Ministry, 1868, 351; and Par- 
liamentary Elections Com- 
mittee, 369; and liquor ques- 
tion, 381 ; leaves Home Office, 
394; becomes Lord Aberdare, 
395. 

Bruce, James, Abyssinian travel- 
ler, 335. 

Bryce, Mr., 459. 

Brydon, Dr., the last man of the 
army of Cabul, 53; in siege 
of Lucknow, 194. 

Buccleuch, Duke of, opposed to 
repeal of corn law, 75. 

Buckingham, Duke of, Colonial 
Secretary, 303. 

Bulgaria, insurrection in, 410; 
the atrocities, 410-14; and 
Treaty of Berlin, 421. 

Bull Run, battle of, 241. 

Buller, Charles, in Parliament of 
1837, 8. 

Buller, Sir Redvers, 535. 

Burdett, Sir F., and Dundonald, 
239. 

Burke, Colonel, 316. 

Burke, Thomas, assassination of, 
440-41. 

Burma, annexation of part of, 
449. 

Burnaby, Colonel Frederick, 446. 

Burnes, Alexander, in Afghan- 
istan, 45; mutilation of de- 
spatches, 46; murder of, 48. 

Burns, John, 482-83. 

Butt, Isaac, and Home Rule, 
390-91. 

Byron controversy, 389. 



CABUL, proverb concerning, 
45; Burnes at, 45; entry of 



554 



INDEX. 



CM 



CHE 



Shah Soojah, 47; withdrawal 
of British army from, 51-53; 
entered by Pollock, 55; bazaar 
of, destroyed, 55; Dost Mo- 
hammed, in again, 57; murder 
of Cavagnari in, 425. 

'Caesar, unemployed/ term ap- 
plied to Durham, 23. 

Caffre war, 1850, 120. 

Cairnes, Professor, opposes Irish 
University Bill, 393. 

Cairns, Sir Hugh, afterwards 
Lord, 209, 279-80; Lord Chan- 
cellor, 330. 

Cambridge, Duke of, and Great 
Exhibition, 108. 

Cameron, Captain, Abyssinian 
prisoner, 335-36. 

Campbell, Lord, opposes Great 
Exhibition, 107. 

Campbell, Sir Colin, at Lucknow, 
192; advances on Cawnpore, 
193; reconquers Lucknow, 
194; announces end of mutiny, 
195. 

Campbell-Bannerman, SirHenry , 
Secretary for War, 459; army 
reform, 461; leader of Liberal 
party, 519-20. 

Canada, in 1837, 20; Papineau's 
rebellion, 21; Durham's mis- 
sion, 22-25; Canadian Govern- 
ment Bill, 25; and confedera- 
tion, 306-309; Fenian inva- 
sion of, 315. 

Canning, Lord, and Pacifico case, 
97; and Peelites, 104; Gov- 
ernor-General India, 174-76; 
Indian mutiny, 177-78; capt- 
ure of Delhi, 181; proclama- 
tion, 196-98; Viceroy, 200; 
death, 266. 

Canrobert at Crimea, 158. 

Canterbury, Archbishop of, and 
Princess Victoria's accession, 
2; and Public Worship Bill, 
399, 400. 

Canton, Port of, thrown open, 
27; bombarded, 165; captured, 
206-207. 



Card well, and Peelites, 104; on 
Ellenborough despatch, 197; 
and Conspiracy Bill, 206; Irish 
Secretary, 223; unsuccessfully 
opposed by Thackeray at 
Oxford, 265; and Jamaica, 
282; and Canadian Confedera- 
tion, 308; War Secretary, 351; 
war reforms, 363-64. 

Carlisle, Lord, and Bedchamber 
question, 37. 

Carlyle, Thomas, and Jamaica 
question, 286. 

Carnarvon, Lord, Colonial Secre- 
tary, 1866, 294; Colonial Sec- 
retary, 1874, 397; resigns on 
'Ten Minutes' Bill, 301-03; 
resigns, 418; Viceroy of Ire- 
land, 450. 

Cashmere and Runjeet Singh, 
46. 

Catherine II. and Treaty of Kut- 
chuk-Kainardji, 138. 

Catholic emancipation, 58. 

Cavagnari, Louis, murder of, in 
Cabul, 426. 

Cavendish, Lord Frederick, 432; 
assassination of, 440. 

Cavour and Crimean war, 158; 
and Congress of Paris, 161; 
and Napoleon's Italian policy, 
201, 217-18; sympathy with 
North, 242; compared with 
Bismarck, 257. 

Cawnpore, story of, 182-91. 

Cecil — see Salisbury. 

Cecil, Lord Hugh, 520. 

Cetewayo, 427-29. 

Chalmers, Dr., 34-35. 

Chamberlain, Mr., President of 
Board of Trade, 451 ; re- 
signs, 453; Colonial Secretary, 
540. 

Chaplin, Henry, 541. 

Chartism, 16-19, 88-91. 

Chelmsford, General Lord, in 
South Africa, 429. 

Chelmsford, Lord, and Ecclesias- 
tical Titles Bill, 105; and 
Lorcha Arrow, 166; removed 



INDEX. 



555 



CHE 



COR 



from woolsack, 330-31; and 
Abyssinian prisoners, 335. 

Chester Castle, Fenian attack on, 
315. 

Chevalier, Michel, 227. 

Childers, Hugh, in Gladstone 
Ministry, 1868, 351; resigns, 
395; Budget of, 449; Home 
Secretary, 451. 

Children, regulation of labour of, 
28. 

Chillian wallah, battle of, 175. 

Chimneys, prohibition of chil- 
dren climbing, 28. 

China, opium war, 25-28; Lorcha 
Arrow, 164-67; war with, 233- 
37; war with Japan, 488; open 
door in, 491; Dowager-Em- 
press of, 492; Boxers, 492- 
97; British Legation besieged, 
495-96. 

Chupatties, the, 177. 

Church Discipline Bill, 511. 

Church Patronage Scotland Bill, 
398. 

Churchill, Lord Randolph, Sec- 
retary for India, 449; Chan- 
cellor of Exchequer, 454; re- 
signs, 454-55. 

Clarendon, Lord, Foreign Secre- 
tary, 275, 350; and Alabama 
claims, 374-75. 

Clerkenwell explosion, 317-18. 

Cleveland, President, 463. 

Clontarf , O'Connell's meeting at, 
60. 

Clvde, Lord — see Campbell, Sir 
Colin. 

Coalition Ministry, 128; fall of, 
154-55. 

Cobden, enters Parliament in 
1841, 32; Anti - Corn Law 
League, 69-71; Palmerston's 
foreign policy, 97; Ecclesias- 
tical Titles Act, 103; Peace 
Society, 146; Lorcha Arrow, 
166-67; refuses office under 
Palmerston, 223-24; commer- 
cial treaty with France, 226- 
27; death of, 267. 



Cochrane — see Dundonald. 

Cockburn, speech on Pacifico 
case, 97-98. 

Coleridge, Samuel, and postal 
system, 14-15. 

Colley, Sir George, 434. 

Collier, Sir Robert, 380. 

Collings, Jesse, 451. 

Columbia River and Oregon 
Treaty, 67. 

Commercial Treaty with France, 
226-27. 

Conciliation Hall and O'Connell, 
60. 

Condon, or Shore and Manches- 
ter rescue, 317. 

Confederation of North Amer- 
ican Provinces, 306-09. 

Congress of Berlin, 420-21. 

Conolly, Captain, prisoner in 
Bokhara, 57. 

'Conservative,' first use of term, 
8. 

Consort, Prince, marriage of, to 
Queen announced, 39; charac- 
ter, 40; marriage, 41; long 
unpopular, 42; and duelling 
system, 42; and Great Ex- 
hibition, 106-09; and Palmer- 
ston's foreign policy, 111-13; 
unpopular during Crimean 
War, 151 ; and Louis Napoleon, 
157; death of, 244-45. 

Conspiracy to Murder Bill, 199- 
206; dropped, 209. 

Constantine, his travelling con- 
trasted with Peel's, 12. 

Constantinople Conference, 415- 
16. 

Conyngham, Lord, and Queen's 
accession, 2. 

Cooke, Mr., and electric tele- 
graph, 12. 

Co-operative societies, 324-27. 

Copyright question, 64. 

Corea, treaties between Russia 
and Japan, and England and 
Japan, 488. 

Corn Laws — see Anti-Corn Law 
League. 



556 



INDEX. 



COR 



DER 



Coronation Oath, discussion of, 
549. 

Corry, Mr., at Admiralty, 303. 

Coup d'etat, 116-18. 

Courtney, Leonard, resigns of- 
fice, 448; on South African 
troubles, 471; Local Govern- 
ment Bill, 522; retires, 541. 

Cowen, Joseph, and Queen's 
Title Bill, 408. 

Cranborne — see Salisbury. 

Cranborne, Viscount, 510. 

Cranbrook, Lord — see Hardy, 
Gathorne. 

Creighton, Dr., 509; death of, 
546. 

Crete, insurrections in, 327, 410, 
462; Turkish misrule in, 473. 

Crimean War, 132-62; and Sepoy 
176. 

Criminal law, commission of in- 
quiry into, 28. 

Crofton, Sir Walter, and ticket- 
of-leave system, 169. 

Croker, J. W., and Dundonald, 
239. 

Cross, Mr., Home Secretary, 398, 
450; and Artisans' Dwelling 
Bill, 404; Viscount, 541. 

Crystal Palace, 109. 

Cuba, American sympathy with, 
502-03; ceded to United 
States, 505. 

Cumberland, Duke of, 4. 

Cunard Line established, 18. 

Curzon, Lord, Viceroy of India, 
490. 

Customs system, 226. 



T)AILY NEWS and Bulgarian 
-LS atrocities, 412-13. 
Dalhousie, Lord, in India, 174; 

disregards Hindoo principle 

of adoption, 183; death of, 

266. 
Dalling, Lord, 'There was a 

Palmerston/ 118. 
Damascus, massacre in, 237. 
Danube, navigation of, thrown 



open, 160; principalities and 
Congress of Paris, 161. 

Dardanelles, no foreign war- 
ships admitted into, 30; ques- 
tion of, 144-45; and Congress 
of Paris, 160. 

Davidson, Dr. Randall, 508. 

Davis, J. C. B., and Alabama 
commission, 376. 

Davis, Jefferson, President 
Southern Confederacy, 240; 
and Confederate navy, 246; 
captured, 250. 

Davis, Thomas, and ' Young 
Ireland/ 91. 

Davitt, Michael, on distress in 
Ireland, 522; National Con- 
vention of Ireland, 528. 

Day, Mr. Justice, 456. 

Death, decrease of punishment 
of, 28. 

Death duties, 461. 

Delhi, mutiny in, 172; princes 
of, killed by Hodson, 191 ; 
old king sent to Rangoon, 
195. 

Denman, Lord, Evidence Act, 
210-11. 

Denmark, war with Prussia and 
Austria, 257-60. 

Derby, Lord, the Elder, in Par- 
liament, 1837, 9; character of, 
10; Colonial Secretary, 1841, 
31; opposed to opening of 
ports, 74-75; vote of censure 
in Pacifico case, 96; sent for, 
1851, 103; takes office, 121; 
and protection, 122; fails to 
form ministry, 155; and Lor- 
cha Arrow, 165-66; and Ind- 
ian Government, 199; new 
ministry, 207; contrasted with 
his son, 208; drops Con- 
spiracy Bill, 209; and reform 
schemes, 219; and paper duty, 
228; on Parliament of 1865, 
268; forms ministry, 294; 
phrase 'Leap in the Dark' 
wrongly ascribed to, 306; and 
Manchester prisoners, 317; re- 



INDEX. 



557 



DER 



DRU 



tireinent of, 329; death of, 
354-55. 

Derby, Lord, the Younger, Ind- 
ian Secretary, 199; Colonial 
Secretary, 207; contrasted 
with his father, 208-09; Indian 
Secretary, 214; Foreign Secre- 
tary, 1866, 294; and Atlantic 
cable, 298; announces his 
father's retirement, 329; and 
Abyssinia, 337; and Irish State 
Church, 344; Foreign Secre- 
tary, 1874, 397; and Herze- 
govina rising, 410; and An- 
drassy Note, 412; and Berlin 
Memorandum, 412; and Con- 
stantinople Conference, 415; 
resigns, 420. 

Devonshire, Duke of, 540, 548. 

Diamond Jubilee, 464-65. 

Dickens, Charles, and Jamaica 
question, 286; death of, 359- 
60. 

Dilke, Sir Charles, and Republi- 
canism, 382-83; refuses Chief 
Secretaryship for Ireland, 440. 

Dillon, John B., and 'Young 
Ireland,' 93; in Parliament, 
270. 

Dillon, John, tribute to Glad- 
stone, 479; National Conven- 
tion, 528-29. 

Dillwyn and Irish' State Church, 
264. 

Disraeli, in Parliament of 1837, 
8; early career, 79-81; attack 
on Peel, 81-82; sugar duties, 
87; Papal Hierarchy, 101-03; 
'There was a Palmerston,' 
118; leader of House, 121-22; 
abandons Protection, 124; 
Budget of 1852, 127; answered 
by Gladstone, 128; on coali- 
tions, 154—55, 157; speaking 
contrasted with G. C. Lewis's, 
163; and Lorcha Arrow, 166; 
and Indian Mutiny, 17S; and 
Conspiracy Bill, 203, 205; 
Chancellor of Exchequer, 207, 
209; and Jews, 209-10; Re- 



form Bill, 218-21; and Gra- 
ham, 222; on Lords, 229; on 
Reform Bill, 231-32; and 
Danish question, 260-61; and 
Cobden's death, 267; and new 
Parliament, 1865, 271; face to 
face with Gladstone, 277-78; 
and Lowe, 290-91 ; Chancellor 
of Exchequer, 1866, 294; and 
Reform disturbances, 296; 
and reform, 299; reform by 
resolution, 300; the 'Ten 
Minutes' Bill, 301-03; the new 
Reform Bill, 303-05; educat- 
ing his partv, 328-29; Prime 
Minister, 329-31; attacked by 
Salisbury, 345; dissolves, 346; 
resigns, 350; and Irish State 
Church, 352-53; and Army 
purchase, 367; and Joseph 
Arch, 386; and Home Rule, 
389; Irish University Bill, 
393; declines office, 394; Prime 
Minister, 1874, 397; describes 
Salisbury as master of jibes 
and flouts and jeers, 401; 
Public Worship Bill, 401; and 
Mr. Plimsoll, 403; contrasted 
with Gladstone, 406; Suez 
Canal shares, 407; South 
African Confederation, 407; 
appoints Lvtton Viceroy of 
India, 408; Queen's Title Bill, 
408-10; Eastern Question, 
409-12; Bulgarian atrocities, 
413; becomes Lord Beacons- 
field, 414; speech at Ayles- 
bury, 415; and Russia, 416; on 
Derby's resignation, 420; at 
Congress of Berlin, 421 ; ' Peace 
with Honour,' 423; popularity 
of Government on the wane, 
425; dissolves, 431; death of, 
440. 

Divorce Act, 167. 

Dockers' strike, 483. 

Dost Mohammed, 45-48, 57. 

Drouyn de Lhuys and Pacifico 
case, 96. 

Druses, 237. 



558 



INDEX. 



DUB 



FOR 



Dublin University Test Bill, 
394. 

Duelling, Prince Consort and, 
42. 

Dufferin, Lord, in Lebanon, 
237-38; in Gladstone Minis- 
try, 1868, 351. 

Duffy, C. G., and 'Young Ire- 
land,' 92, 94. 

Dundonald, death of, 238-39. 

Dunn, John, 430. 

Durham letter, 101. 

Durham, Lord, 22-25, 307-08, 
465. 

Dynamite outrages in London, 
447. 



EASTERN question, 132-40; 
410-12; 462. 

East India Company and China, 
26; and King of Delhi, 172; 
and Oude, 175; war with 
Persia, 176; end of, 198-200. 

Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, 99- 
106. 

Education BiU, 523-25. 

Edward VII. takes the oath, 
548-49; illness and corona- 
tion, 549. 

Egypt and Mohammed Ali, 29- 
30; Viceroy in England, 328; 
purchase of Suez Canal shares, 
407; troubles in, 1882, 441-42; 
England's responsibilities in, 
497. 

Election petitions, 331-34. 

Elgin, Lord, and Indian Mutiny, 
179; treaty with China, 207; 
China war, 233, 235-36; death 
of, 266. 

Elgin, Lord, Viceroy of India, 
retires, 489. 

Ellenborough, Lord, Governor- 
General of India, 54; charac- 
ter of, 54-55; proclamation of, 
57; annexes Scinde, 65-66; 
on Canning's proclamation, 
197; Indian Secretary, 207, 
214; Polish insurrection, 255. 



Elliott, Captain, and opium 

war, 27. 
Elliott, Sir Henry, and Con- 
stantinople Conference, 415; 

transferred to Vienna, 417. 
Elphinstone, General, and Cabul 

rising, 48, 50, 53; death of, 56. 
Emmet, Robert, and O'Connell, 

59. 
Evangelicals, the, 399. 
Executions, public, abolished, 

33. 
Exeter, Conservative victory at, 

in 1875, 395. 
Exhibition, Great, 106-09; of 

1862, 251. 
Eyre, Governor, and Jamaica, 

282-87. 



FACTORY Acts, 141. 
'Fancy franchises,' 220. 

Fashoda incident, 499-500. 

Fawcett, Mr., and Army pur- 
chase, 367; Dublin Universitv 
Tests BiU, 394. 

Fawcett, Mrs. Henry, 538. 

Federation, colonial, 465-66. 

Fenian movement, 312-19. 

Field, Cyrus W., and Atlantic 
cable, 164, 298-99. 

Finlay, Mr., and Greek Govern- 
ment, 75. 

Fish, Hamilton, and Alabama 
commission, 376. 

Fisherv question, Canadian, 376- 
77. * 

Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, and 
O'Connell, 59, 312. 

Florida, Confederate privateer, 
245. 

Forbes, Archibald, 149. 

Foreign Legion Act, 161. 

Forster, W. E., Under-Secretary 
Colonies, 375-76, 378; Vice- 
President Council, 351 ; Educa- 
tion Bill, 360-63; Ballot Bill, 
368-69; and leadership, 405; 
Chief Secretary for Ireland, 
432, 438-39; resigns, 439. 



INDEX. 



559 



FOR 



GLA 



Fortescue, Chichester, Irish Sec- 
retary, 275. 

Fourth Party, 432. 

Fowke, Captain, and Exhibition, 
1862, 251. 

Fox, Charles James, on govern- 
ment of Ireland, 349. 

Fox, W. J., and Anti-Corn Law 
League, 72; unseated, 167. 

France and Mohammed Ali, 30; 
Tahiti, 66; Pacifico case, 96; 
death of Louis Philippe, 99; 
Louis Napoleon, 115; Coup 
d'etat, 117; Crimean War, 143- 
47; Orsini plot, 202; war with 
Austria, 217-18, 221; Com- 
mercial Treaty, 226-27; Chi- 
nese War, 235-36; and Leba- 
non, 237-38; sympathy with 
South, 242; Mexico, 249-50; 
Polish insurrection, 255-56; 
war with Prussia, 371-72. 

Franchise Bill, 447. 

Francis, John, attempts life of 
Queen, 43. 

Franklin, Sir John, last expedi- 
tion, 67. 

Free Trade, 59, 68-84, 122-23. 

Frere, Sir Bartle, and South 
Africa, 428-30. 

Froude, James Anthony, 32; and 
South Africa, 408. 

Froude, Richard Hurrell, and 
Oxford movement, 32. 

Fuad Pasha and Lebanon out- 
rages, 238. 



GANDAMAK, Treaty of, 426. 
Gaol system, improvement 

of, 28._ 
Garibaldi on Gladstone and 

Poerio, 131,263,328. 
Genoa, death of O'Connell at, 62. 
George III., 2. 

George of Greece, Prince, 474-76. 
Gettysburg, battle of, 249. 
Gibson, Milner, and Anti-Corn 

Law League, 72; and Lorcha 

Arrow, 166; unseated, 167; 



and Conspiracy Bill, 205-206; 
offered place by Palmerston, 
223-24; unseated, 347. 

'Gigantic innovation/ phrase of 
Gladstone's, 230. 

Gladstone, Herbert, 522. 

Gladstone, Mr., in Parliament of 
1837, 9; not in Cabinet, 1841, 
32; Maynooth grant, 63; and 
Palmerston's foreign policy, 
97; and Ecclesiastical Titles 
Act, 103; and Peelites, 104; 
and Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, 
105; Chancellor of Exchequer, 
Coalition Ministry, 128; at- 
tacks Disraeli's budget, 1852, 
128; character and early ca- 
reer of, 128-31; Poerio pro- 
test, 131; objection to war, 
146; resists Roebuck's Cri- 
mean motion, 154; resigns, 
156; speaking contrasted with 
G. C. Lewis's, 163; and Lorcha 
Arrow, 166; opposes Divorce 
Act, 167; Conspiracy Bill, 206, 
209; Ionian Islands, 216-17; 
Chancellor of Exchequer, 223; 
Paper duty, 227, 231; and 
Palmerston on war, 252; his 
financial policy made use of 
by Palmerston, 261; his ad- 
vance towards Radicalism, 
262-64; elected South Lan- 
cashire, 271; leader in Com- 
mons, 276; face to face with 
Disraeli, 277-78; and Reform 
Bill, 1866, 282-92; resigns, 
292; and Reform agitation, 
295; defeated South Lan- 
cashire, elected Greenwich, 
346; resolutions on Irish State 
Church, 343-46; Prime Minis- 
ter, 350; disestablishment Irish 
Church, 351-55; land ques- 
tion, 355-57; Land Bill, 358; 
abolishes Army purchase, 364- 
68; growing unpopularity, 
379-80; Home Rule move- 
ment, 391; Irish University 
Education Bill, 391-94; re- 



560 



INDEX. 



GOR 



HAN 



signs and returns to office, 
394; dissolves Parliament and 
resigns, 396; retires from lead- 
ership, 398; and Public Wor- 
ship Bill, 400; religious con- 
troversy, 405 ; contrasted with 
Disraeli, 406; Bulgarian atroc- 
ities, 413-14; and Jingo mob, 
424; Prime Minister, 432; and 
the Transvaal, 434-35; Peace 
Preservation Act, 436; Irish 
Land question, 436; Franchise 
Bill, 447; bill for redistribu- 
tion of seats, 448; resigns, 449; 
forms Ministry, 451; first 
Home Rule Bill, 452-53; sec- 
ond Home Rule Bill, 459; re- 
tires, 461; death of, 477; char- 
acter of, 477-78 ; burial, 479-80. 

Gordon, General, 446-47. 

Gordon, G. W., and Jamaica, 
281-82, 285-86, 287. 

Gorst, Sir John, 523-24. 

Gortschakoff, General, with- 
draws from Sebastopol, 159. 

Gortschakoff, Prince, and Polish 
insurrection, 256. 

Goschen, Vice-President Board 
of Trade, 275; and leadership, 
405; retiral, 541. 

Gosford, Lord, and Canadian re- 
bellion, 21. 

Gough, Sir Hugh, afterwards 
Lord, and opium war, 27; and 
Sikh war, 66, 175. 

Graham, Sir James, Home Secre- 
tary, 31; Mazzini's letters, 65; 
Ecclesiastical Titles Act, 103; 
and Peelites, 104; resigns, 156; 
Conspiracy Bill, 206, 209; 
'Red Indian of debate,' 222; 
death of, 266. 

Grant, Sir Hope, at Cawnpore, 
194; and China war, 1859-60, 
235. 

Grant, Sir J. P., sent to Jamaica, 
287. 

Grant, Robert, and Jews, 210. 

Grant, U. S., takes Vicksburg, 
249. 



Granville, Lord, Foreign Secre- 
tary, 117; unable to form 
Ministry, 222-23; Colonial 
Secretary, 351; sent for, 431; 
Secretary for the Colonies, 451. 

Great Western, transatlantic voy- 
age of, 12. 

Greece, Pacifico case, 95-96; and 
Ionian Islands, 216-17; and 
Treaty of Berlin, 421-22. 

Greenwood, Mr. F., and Suez 
Canal shares, 407. 

Gretna Green, marriage of Lord 
Durham at, 22; marriages 
made illegal, 170. 

Grey, General, and Mr. Disraeli, 
329-30. 

Grey, Lord, influence of Lord 
Durham over, 22; Colonial 
Secretary, 84; ticket-of -leave 
svstem, 168-69; Reform Bill, 
220. 

Grey, Sir George, Home Secre- 
tary, 84; ticket-of-leave sys- 
tem, 170; suspension of Ha- 
beas Corpus in Ireland, 311. 

Gros, Baron, treaty with China, 
207, 233, 235. 

Grote, Mr., in Parliament of 
1837, 8. 

Guizot and Mohammed Ali, 30; 
Spanish marriages, 87. 

Gulliver, allusion to, 37. 

Gully, Mr. Speaker, 540. 

Gurney, Russell, and Public 
Worship Bill, 399. 

Gwalior in Indian mutiny, 194- 
95. 



HAGUE Conference, the, 518- 
19. 
Halifax, Lord, 509. 
Hall, Sir Benjamin, and Jews, 

211-12. 
Halsbury, Lord, 548. 
Hamilton, attempts life of Queen, 

43. 
Hannen, Sir James, 456. 
Hanover and British crown, 4-5, 



INDEX. 



56i 



HAR 



Harcourt, Sir William, and 
Public Worship BiU, 400-401 ; 
leadership, 405; and the Ex- 
plosives Act, 445; Chancellor 
of Exchequer, 451, 459, 461; 
on death of Gladstone, 478; 
and Ritualism, 507. 

Hardy, Mr. Gathorne, after- 
wards Lord Cranbrook, 280; 
Home Secretary, 306; Irish 
State Church, 344, 353; War 
Secretary, 398; on Cowen's 
speech on Queen's Title Bill, 
408; Lord Cranbrook, 420. 

Harris, Dr. Rutherford, 469. 

Hart-Dyke, Sir William, 450. 

Hartington, Lord, at Willis's 
Rooms, 221 - 22; defeated 
North Lancashire, 346; elected 
Radnor Boroughs, 346-47; in 
Gladstone ministry, 1868, 351 ; 
chosen leader, 405; sent for, 
431. 

Hastings, Warren, 198. 

Hatherley, Lord, Lord Chan- 
cellor, 351; resigns, 391. 

Hatteras defeated by Alabama, 
246. 

Havelock, Sir Henry, Indian 
mutiny, 179; marches on 
Cawnpore, 1S9; relieves Luck- 
now, 192; death of, 193. 

Hawksley, Mr., 469, 471-72. 

Head, Sir F., Canadian Con- 
federation, 308. 

Henlev, Mr., President Board of 
Trade, 207; resignation, 220. 

Hennessy, Sir John Pope, and 
Polish insurrection, 255. 

Herat, Prince of, and Dost Mo- 
hammed, 45; besieged by Per- 
sia, 176. 

Herbert, Auberon, and Repub- 
licanism, 383; and Joseph 
Arch, 385. 

Herbert, Sidney, and Pacifico 
case, 97; and Peelites, 104; 
asks Miss Nightingale to go to 
Crimea, 152; resigns, 156; and 
Lorcha Arrow, 166; Conspir- 
24* 



HUT 

acy Bill, 206, 209; at Willis's 
Rooms, 221; War Minister, 
223; death of, 266. 
Herzegovina, rising in, 410-11; 

and Treaty of Berlin, 422. 
Hicks-Beach, Sir Michael, Co- 
lonial Secretary, 420; on Chil- 
ders's Budget, 449; Chancellor 
of Exchequer, 450, 461, 540; 
Chief Secretary for Ireland, 
454; resigns, 457. 

Hill, Matthew Davenport, prison 
reformer, 14. 

Hill, Sir Rowland, postal system, 
14-16. 

Hill, Thomas Wright, father of 
Rowland Hill, 14. 

Hindostan, proverb concerning, 
45 — see also India. 

Hoar, Mr. E. R., and Alabama 
commission, 376. 

Hodson of 'Hodson's Horse' 
kills Delhi princes, 191-92. 

Holkar in Indian Mutiny, 194. 

Holland, Sir Henry, death of, 
389. 

Holy places, 138-40. 

Home Rule movement, 389-91. 

Hope, Admiral, and Chinese 
War, 1859-60, 234. 

Hope, Beresford, and Ecclesias- 
tical Titles Act, 103. 

Hopetoun, Lord, 545. 

Hospital Fund, the Prince of 
Wales's, 464. 

Howard, Hubert, 498. 

Howley, Dr., 2. 

Hudson's Bay Territories, 307, 
309. 

Hughes, Thomas, elected Lam- 
beth, 270. 

Humbert, King, assassination of, 
550. 

Hungary, Kossuth's rebellion in, 
113-15. 

Hunt, Ward, censure on West- 
bury, 268; Chancellor of Ex- 
chequer, 331; Admiralty, 398; 
navv scare, 398. 

Hutt/Mr., 275. 



562 



INDEX. 



HUX 



KEN 



Huxley, Professor, and Jamaica 
question, 286; and School 
Board, 363. 

Hyde Park, reform meetings in, 
295-97, 305. 



TBRAHIM PASHA, 29-30. 

i- Iddesleigh, Lord — see North- 
cote. 

Income tax established on pres- 
ent basis by Peel, 64. 

India, the Mutiny, 170; former 
mutinies, 172; Hindoos and 
Mohammedans, 173-75; the 
Chupatties, 177; Canning, 178- 
79; Punjaub saved, 179-80; 
death of Henry Lawrence, 
181; Cawnpore, 182-91; Hod- 
son of 'Hodson's Horse' kills 
Delhi princes, 191; Lucknow 
relieved, 192; death of Have- 
lock, 193; the Ranee of Jhansi, 
194; end of Mutiny, 195; Can- 
ning's proclamation, 196-97; 
end of John Companv, .198- 
200; troops sent from, 419-20; 
famine and plague in, 489- 
90. 

Inkerman, battle of, 151. 

Ionian Islands, 216-17. 

Ireland, potato famine in, 1845, 
74, 85-87; O'Connell, 57-62; 
'Young Ireland,' 91-94; Ec- 
clesiastical Titles Bill, 104-05; 
political riots in, 123; ticket- 
of-leave system, 169; suspen- 
sion of Habeas Corpus, 311; 
Fenian movement, 312-19; 
Irish Church question, 339- 
42; Mr. Maguire's motion, 342; 
Mr. Gladstone's resolutions, 
343-46; Irish Land Bill, 358- 
59; University Education Bill, 
391-94; famine, 430; Peace 
Preservation Act, 436; Irish 
party and Mr. Parnell, 436-37 
Irish National party, 438; res- 
toration of Gaelic, 435-36; 
first Home Rule Bill, 452- 



53; second Home Rule Bill, 
459-60. 

Irish Brigade, 163. 

Isandlana, defeat of, 429. 

Italy and Crimean War, 156, 158, 
161 ; and Franco-Austrian War, 
217-18, 221 ; and War between 
Austria and Prussia,298. 



JACOB, Colonel, and Indian 
Mutiny, 179. 

Jamaica, proposed suspension of 
Constitution, 36; Jamaica Bill, 
39; disturbance in, 281-88. 

James, Edwin, and Bernard trial, 
204. 

Jameson, Dr., 463, 466-67. 

Japan, murder of Mr. Richard- 
son, 253-54; bombardment of 
Kagosima, 254 ; insurrection 
in, 254; changes in, 487; war 
with China, 488; as rival of 
Russia, 488-89; and Boxers, 
496. 

Jellalabad, Sale at, 52; arrival 
of Brydon at, 53; defeat of 
Akbar Khan before, 54. 

Jews, disabilities of, 28, 64, 210- 
14. 

Jhansi, annexation of, 175; Ra- 
nee of, death of, 194. 

Jingoes, the, 418. 

John Company — see East India 
Company. 

John, Prince of Denmark, 259. 

Johnson, Reverdy, and Alabama 
claims, 374-75. 

Juarez, Benito, and Mexico, 
249-50. 



KAGOSIMA, bombardment of, 
254. 
Kars, siege of, 159. 160, 417. 
Kearsarge defeats Alabama, 246. 
Keble and Oxford Movement, 

32, 34. 
Kennington Common and Char- 
tism, 89-90. 



INDEX. 



563 



KEN 



LOW 



Kensit, Mr., 511. 

Kent, Duke of, 2; and Canadian 

Confederation, 308. 
Ketteler, Baron von, murder of, 

494. 
Khartoum, British in, 498-99. 
Kickham, C. J., 314. 
Kimberley, Lord, Secretary for 

India, 451; on Ritualism, 509. 
King, Mr. Locke, and county 

franchise, 103; and property 

qualification, 214. 
Kinglake, Mr., and Conspiracy 

Bill, 203, 205. 
Kingsley, Canon, and Jamaica 

question, 286. 
Kinnaird, Lord, 509. 
Kitchener, Lord, in Egypt, 497- 

501; entertained by Lord 

Mayor of London, 499; South 

African War, 535, 538. 
Koh-i-noor diamond, 175. 
Kossuth, Louis, 113-15, 328. 
Kruger, Stephen John Paul, 434, 

463-64, 532-34; flight from 

Pretoria, 537. 
Kuper, Admiral, bombards Ka- 

gasima, 254. 
Kutchuk-Kainardji, Treaty of, 

138-40. 



TABOUCHERE, Henry, and 

Jj annuities, 443; on South Afri- 
can troubles, 469-70,473; and 
House of Lords, 521. 

Labouchere, Mr. (afterwards 
Lord Taunton) , and Canadian 
Confederation, 308. 

Labour party, rise of, 482; Inter- 
national Labour Conference at 
Berlin, 483. 

Laird and Alabama, 246-47. 

Landseer, death of, 389. 

Langalibalele, 428. 

Lansdowne, Marquis of, 540. 

Larkin, and Manchester rescue, 
317. 

Lavalette, M., and holy places, 
138. 



Lawrence, Lord, and Punjaub, 
179-80; and School Boards, 
363. 

Lawrence, Sir Henry, 179; death 
of, 181-82, 182-83. 

Lawton, Sir Wilfrid, 381. 

Layard, Mr., character of, 155; 
and Lorcha Arrow, 167; in 
office, 277; public works, 351; 
at Constantinople, 417. 

'Leap in the Dark,' the, 306. 

Lebanon, trouble in, 237-38. 

Lee defeated at Gettysburg, 249; 
surrenders, 250. 

Lesseps, M., 164. 

Lewis, Sir G. C, Chancellor of 
Exchequer, 156; character, 
163; Reform Bill, 232; Home 
Secretary, 233; and Palmer- 
ston on war, 252; death of, 
266. 

Liberal policy, divisions in, 480. 

Light Brigade, Charge of, 150. 

Lincoln, Abraham, President, 
239; calls for volunteers, 240; 
and Wilkes's case, 243; as- 
sassination of, 251. 

Liprandi, General, 158. 

Livingstone, Dr., death of, 388. 

Llanover, Lord — see Hall, Sir B. 

Local Government Bill, 522. 

Lock, Mr., taken by Chinese, 
235. 

London County Council, 458. 

Londonderry, Marquis of, 486. 

Lone Star expedition, 502. 

Lopez, General, 502. 

Lorraine yielded to Germany, 
372. 

Louis Philippe and Mohammed 
Ali, 30; Spanish marriages, 
87; flight, 88; death, 99. 

Lowe, Mr., character, 106; Dis- 
raeli's Budget, 1852, 127; and 
Lord Robert Cecil, 276-77; 
and Reform Bill, 289-91; re- 
fuses office under Derby, 294; 
'Our New Masters/ 306; Irish 
State Church, 345; elected 
University London, 347; Bud- 



564 



INDEX. 



LOW 



MAX 



gets of, 371 ; Match Tax, 371 ; 
resigns, 395; Home Secretary, 
395; and Mr. Baxter, 395; and 
leadership, 405; and Queen's 
Title Bill, 408-409. 

Lowther, James, Irish Secre- 
tary, 420. 

Lucan, Lord, and Jews, 213. 

Lucknow, death of Henry Law- 
rence at, 181; relieved, 192; 
captured, 194. 

Lushington, Dr., death of, 389. 

Lyndhurst, Lord, character, 7-8; 
- Lord Chancellor, 31 ; and Jews, 
64; Lorcha Arrow, 165-66; 
and Jews, 211; and Louis 
Napoleon, 226; Paper Duty, 
228-29; death of, 348. 

Lytton, Lord, the Elder, in Par- 
liament, 1837, 8; censure on 
Russell, 157; and Lorcha 
Arrow, 166; Colonial Secre- 
tary, 214; character, 215; 
Ionian Islands, 216-17; on 
Lewis and Reform Bill, 232; 
death of, 388. 

Lytton, Lord, the Younger, Vice- 
roy of India, 408. 



M 'ARTHUR, C, 511. 
Macaulay, Paymaster-Gen- 
eral, 84; elected for Edin- 
burgh, 124; maiden speech on 
Jewish question, 210; death 
of, 224-25. 

McCarthy, Sir Charles, and 
Ashantee war (1824), 396. 

Macdonald, Sir J. A., and 
Alabama commission, 376. 

MacGahan, and Bulgarian atroc- 
ities, 413. 

McGee, T. D., and 'Young Ire- 
land/ 94. 

McKinley, President, 504-05. 

Mackintosh, and Jews, 210. 

M'Laren, Duncan, elected for 
Edinburgh, 270. 

Maclean, Roderick, attempt 
upon the Queen, 44, 



Macnaghten, Lady, interview 
with Akbar Khan, 52. 

Macnaghten, Sir W., and Dost 
Mohammed, 47; and Cabul 
rising, 48; murder of, 50, 55. 

MacNeill, Swift, 321. 

Mad Mullah, 489. 

Mafeking, relief of, 537. 

Magdala, 336; capture of, 338. 

Magenta, 221. 

Maguire, Mr., and Manchester 
rescue, 317; motion on Irish 
State Church, 342-43. 

Mahmoud, Sultan, war with 
Mohammed Ali and death of, 
29. 

Mahmoud, the Dervish, taken a 
prisoner, 498. 

Maine, burning of the, 504. 

Majuba Hill, battle of, 434-35. 

Malakoff attacked, 158. 

Malmesbury, Lord, Foreign Sec- 
retary, 207; and Chinese war, 
1859-60, 233-35; moves vote 
of censure, 260. 

Mamelon battery, 158. 

Manchester, and trades-union 
outrages, 320-21. 

Mandeville, Sir John, and Pres- 
ter John, 335. 

Manhood suffrage, demanded by 
Chartists, 18. 

Manitoba, and Confederation, 
307. 

Manners, Lord John, public 
works, 207. 

Manning, Cardinal, controversy 
with Gladstone, 405. 

Maori war, 258. 

Marchand, Major, 500-01. 

Marconi, Guglielmo, 543-44. 

Maronites, 237. 

Martineau, Miss, story of Cole- 
ridge, and postal svstem, 14-15. 

Mason, Mr., 243-44. 

Mathew, Father, temperance 
movement of, and O'Connell, 
59. 

Maximilian, and Mexico, 249; 
shot, 250, 



INDEX. 



565 



MAY 



NAP 



Maynooth, grant to college at, 
63; grant, 352. 

Mayo, Lord, Chief Secretary for 
Ireland, 207; and Irish State 
Church, 348; assassination of, 
379. 

Mazzini, opening of letters of, 
65. 

Meade, defeats Lee at Gettys- 
burg, 249. 

Meagher, T. F., and 'Young 
Ireland,' 92; transported, 93; 
death of, 94, 312. 

Meean Meer, Montgomery's ac- 
tion at, 179. 

Meerut, outbreak in, 171. 

Melbourne, Lord, and accession 
of Princess Victoria, 3; charac- 
ter of, 5-6; and Jamaica Bill, 
36; resigns, 36; returns to of- 
fice, 36-37; and Bedchamber 
question, 37-39; resignation 
of, and death, 40; and Protes- 
tantism of Prince Albert, 41. 

Members, payment of, demand- 
ed by Chartists, 18. 

Mentschikoff, Prince, proposals 
to Turkey, 140; commanding 
Russian forces, 147. 

Merchant Shipping Bill, 404. 

Mexico, and Louis Napoleon, 
249-50. 

Miall, Mr., and Forster's Educa- 
tion Bill, 363. 

Milan, entry into, 221. 

Militia Bill,* 119-20, 123. 

Mill, John S., elected West- 
minster, 269-70; and Jamaica 
question, 286; and Gladstone's 
Reform Bill, 1866, 289; op- 
poses suspension of Habeas 
Corpus in Ireland, 311; and 
Fenian prisoners, 316-17; on 
strikes, 323; defeated at West- 
minster, 347: death of, 388. 

Milner, Lord, 534, 538. 

Mitchel, John, and 'Young Ire- 
land,' 92; transported, 93; 
death of, 94, 312. 

Mohammed Ali, 29-30. 



Mohammed, Dost, ruler of Cabul 

again, 57. 
Moles worth, Sir William, in 

Parliament of 1837, 9; and 

Pacifico case, 97; Colonial 

Secretary, 157. 
Monck, Lord, and Canadian 

Confederation, 309. 
Montauban, and Chinese war, 

1859-1860, 235. 
Monteagle, Lord, and paper 

duty, 228. 
Montefiore, Mr., first Jewish 

sheriff of London, knighted, 

3-4. 
Montenegro and Turkey, 411; 

at war, 415; and Treaty of 

Berlin, 421. 
Montgomery, Mr. Robert, and 

Punjaub, 179. 
Montreal, represented by M. 

Papineau, 21. 
Morley, John, 446; Chief Secre- 
tary for Ireland, 451, 459; 

and Imperialism, 520. 
Morpeth, Lord — see Carlisle. 
Morpeth, Lord, Sister of, and 

Bedchamber question, 37. 
Morse, Professor, and electric 

telegraph, 12. 
Muravieff, Count, 513-14. 



"VTAAS, LORD— see Mayo. 

li Nagpore, annexed, i75. 

Nana Sahib, applied to bv 
Wheeler, 183; case of, 183-84; 
besieges Cawnpore, 185; offers 
terms, 186; his treachery, 187- 
88; massacre of the women, 
189-90; disappears, 190-91. 

Napier, Lord, and Abyssinian 
war, 337-39. 

Napoleon, Louis, and Chartism, 
90; character of, 115; Coup 
d'etat, 116; five projects of, 
119; visits England, 157; and 
Orsini, 200-01; and Cavour, 
217-18; enters Milan, 221; 
distrust of, in England, 225- 



5 66 



INDEX. 



NAP 



OUD 



26; Commercial Treaty, 227; 
and Southern Confederacy, 
248; Mexico, 249-50; Poland, 
255-56; Danes, 259; Prussian 
War, 371-72; death of, 387-88. 

Napoleon, Prince, and Free 
Trade, 226-27. 

Napoleon, Prince Imperial, 
death of, 430. 

Nashville, Confederate privateer, 
245. 

Nation, newspaper, 91. 

Navigation laws, repeal of, 121. 

Neale, Colonel, and Prince Sat- 
suma, 254. 

Neil], General, at Allahabad, 
189. 

Nelson, Mr. Justice, and Ala- 
bama commission, 376. 

Nesselrode Memorandum, 136. 

New Brunswick and Canadian 
Confederation, 307-08. 

Newcastle, Duke of, Colonial 
Secretary, 223; death of, 266. 

Newfoundland, 307. 

Newman, F. W., 33-34. 

Newman, John Henry, and Ox- 
ford Movement, 32-34; con- 
troversy with Gladstone, 405. 

New South Wales and transpor- 
tation, 167-68, 310. 

Newspapers, reduction of stamp 
duty on, 28. 

New Zealand, constitution of, 
123; Maori insurrection in, 
253, 310. 

Nicholas, Emperor, in England, 
135-36; conversations with 
Sir Hamilton Seymour, 137; 
death of, 156. 

Nicholson, killed at Delhi, 191. 

Nightingale, Miss Florence, at 
Crimea, 153. 

Nonconformists and Forester's 
Education Bill, 362-63. 

Norfolk Island and transporta- 
tion, 167-68. 

Normanby, Lord, and Bedcham- 
ber question, 37-39, and Coup 
d'etat, 116. 



Northcote, Sir Stafford, 280 
President Board of Trade 
294; Indian Secretary, 303 
and Alabama commission, 376 
Chancellor of Exchequer, 398 
Leader in House of Com- 
mons, 430; death of, 455. 
Nott, General, at Candahar, 54 
Nova Scotia and Canadian Con- 
federation, 307-309. 



O'BRIEN, and Manchester res- 
cue, 317. 

O'Brien, C. S., and 'Young 
Ireland,' 91-94, 312. 

O'Brien, William, 529. 

Obstruction, physical, to Rus- 
sell's Reform Bill, 238. 

O'Connell, Daniel, in Parlia- 
ment, 1837, 11, 57; Catholic 
emancipation, 58; negro sla- 
very, 58; Parliamentary sys- 
tem, 59; monster meetings, 
60; imprisoned, 61; death, 62; 
and Jews, 210. 

O'Connor, Arthur, attempt upon 
Queen's life, 43-44. 

O'Connor, Feargus, and Char- 
tism, 88-89. 

Old-age pensions, 525. 

Olney, Mr., American Secretary 
of 'State, 463. 

Omdurman, battle of, 497-98. 

Opium war, 25-28. 

Orange Free State, 427; an- 
nexed, 537. 

Oregon Treaty, 67. 

Oreto, Confederate privateer, 
245. 

Orsini, Felice, 200-201. 

Ortega, Mexican general, shot, 
250. 

Osborne, Bernal, attacks Dis- 
raeli's Budget, 1852, 127; and 
Salomon's case, 212; unseat- 
ed, 347. 

Osman Pasha at Plevna, 417. 

Otho of Greece, 95, 217. 

Oudh, annexed, 175; king of, 



INDEX. 



567 



OUT 



PER 



177; proclamation to chiefs of, 

197. 
Outlanders, 533. 
Outram and Persian War, 176, 

179; at Alumbagh, 193; 

on Canning's proclamation, 

196. 
Oxford, Edward, attempts life 

of Queen, 43. 
Oxford Movement, 32-34, 399. 



PACIFICO, DON, case of, 95- 
96. 

'Painted Chamber' phrase, 230. 

Pakington, Sir John, Admiralty, 
207, 294; and 'Ten Minutes' 
Bill, 301-03. 

Palikao, General, 235. 

Palmer, Prof. Edward, 444. 

Palmer, Roundell — see Selborne, 
Lord. 

Palmerston, Lord, Foreign Sec- 
retary, 9, 84; Pacifico case, 
96-97; foreign sympathies, 
110; difficulties with Queen 
and Prince Albert, 111-13; 
and Kossuth, 115; and Coup 
d'etat, 116; dismissed, 117- 
18; Militia Bill, 120; Home 
Secretary, 128-141 ; resigns, 
142; resumes office, 143; and 
Roebuck's Crimean motion, 
154; forms Ministry, 155; and 
Crimean army, 156; and Cri- 
mean War, 159; Lorcha Arroiv, 
166 7 67; Divorce Act, 167; 
Indian Government, 198-99; 
Conspiracy to Murder Bill, 
199-200, 202-206, 209; at 
Willis's Rooms, 221; forms 
Ministry, 222-23; offers places 
to Mill*, Cobden, and Milner 
Gibson, 223-24; and Bright, 
224; paper duty, 229-31; and 
Reform, 232-33; and Trent 
affair, 243; and Radical party, 
251-52; and Poland, 256-57; 
and Danes, 258; last great 
speech, 260-61; on Cobden's 
37 



. death, 267; death of, 271-75; 
and tenant right, 356. 

Panmure, Lord, War Secretary, 
155. 

Papal court and hierarchy, 99- 
106. 

Paper duty, 28, 226-31. 

Papineau, Louis, and Canadian 
rebellion, 21-22. 

Paris, Congress of, 160-61; al- 
teration in Treaty of, 373- 
74. 

Parkes, Mr., and Lorcha Arrow, 
164; taken by Chinese, 235. 

Parkes, Sir James, and life peer- 
age, 162. 

Parnell, Charles Stewart, tactics 
of, 425; leader of Irish party, 
438; and the Pigott letters, 
455-56; death of, 459. 

Parnell Commission, 456-57. 

Pascal, reference to, 14. 

Pate, Robert, attacks Queen, 43. 

Pauncefote, Sir Julian, 463; on 
international arbitration, 517. 

Paxton, Sir J., builds Great 
Exhibition, 109. 

Peace Societv, 146. 

Peel, Arthur^ Speaker, 433, 448. 

Peel, General, 207, 294; resigns, 
301-03. 

F*eel, Sir Robert, character, 9- 
10; his travelling from Rome 
contrasted with Constan- 
tine's, 12; Jamaica Bill, 36; 
Bedchamber question, 37-39; 
Queen's marriage, 39; cen- 
sures Melbourne Ministry, 40; 
Bill to punish attacks on 
Queen, 43; Maynooth grant, 
63; Anti-Corn Law League, 
72-78; resigns, 75; repeals 
corn laws, 83; resigns, 84; 
Pacifico case, 97; death, 98- 
99; and Palmerston, 110; and 
Wellington, 125. 

Peel, Sir W., death of, at Luck- 
now, 194. 

Pelissier, at Crimea, 158. 

Persia, and Dost Mahommed, 



568 



INDEX. 



PER 



REG 



45; war with East India Com- 
pany, 176-79; Shah of, 328. 

Persigny and Orsini plot, 202. 

Peter the Great, supposed will 
of, 134. 

Petrel, Confederate privateer, 
245. 

Philippine Islands, ceded to 
United States, 505. 

Phcenix Society, 313. 

Pierri, accomplice of Orsini, 201. 

Pigott forgery, the, 455-56. 

Pius IX., sympathy with North, 
242. 

Plevna, 417. 

Plimsoll, Mr., and merchant sea- 
men, 402-04. 

Plowden, Mr., and Abyssinia, 
335-36. 

Poerio and Gladstone, 131. 

Poland, insurrection in, 254- 
57. 

Pollock, General, and Afghan 
War, 54-56; 58. 

Pomare, Queen of Tahiti, 66. 

Port Arthur, captured by Japan, 
488; declared Russian port, 
492. 

Postal system and Rowland Hill, 
14-16. 

Pottinger, Eldred, and Afghan 
War, 50. 

Preece, Sir W. H., 544. 

Prideaux, Lieutenant, Abyssin- 
ian prisoner, 335-37. 

Prince Edward's Island and 
Canadian Confederation, 307. 

Prince of Wales, attempt on life 
of, 542. 

Pritchard and Tahiti question, 
66. 

Property qualification for Par- 
liament abolished, 214. 

Prussia, war with Austria men- 
tioned, 4; Mahommed Ali, 30; 
King of, and Great Exhibi- 
tion, 108; Russian influence 
upon, 143; King of, 144; For- 
eign Legion Act, 161;.Poland, 
255-56; war with Denmark, 



257-60; war with Austria, 298; 

war with France, 371-72. 
Public Worship Bill, 399-401. 
Public Worship Regulation Act, 

506. 
Punch cartoon, General Fevrier 

turned traitor, 156. 
Punjaub annexed, 175; saved, 

179. 
Purchase in army abolished, 

363-68. 
Pusey, Dr., and Oxford Move- 
ment, 32. 

QUEEN, the— see Victoria. 
Queen's Colleges, 63. 
Queen's Title Bill, 408-09. 
Queensland, 310. 

RAGLAN, LORD, commands 
English forces at Crimean 
War, 147; death of, 157. 

Railways, regulation of, 64. 

Rassam, Mr., Abyssinian pris- 
oner, 335-37. 

Rebecca riots, 65. 

Redan stormed, 158. 

Redcliffe, Lord Stratford de, and 
Vienna Note, 140-41. 

Redmond, John, 521; leader of 
Irish party, 527. 

Red River rebellion, 309. 

Reform agitation, 1866, in Hyde 
Park, 295-97; in country, 
297_99. 

Reform Bill of 1832, and its re- 
sults, 17; Mr. Disraeli's, 218- 
21; Russell and reform, 218; 
and Disraeli's Reform Bill 
221; and new Ministry, 222- 
23; Lord Grey's, 220; of Pal- 
merston Ministry, 226; aban- 
doned, 231-33; Russell's, 268; 
Gladstone's, of 1866, 288-92; 
Mr. Disraeli's measures, 299- 
305; meeting in Hyde Park, 
305. 

Registration, general measures 
for, 28. 



INDEX. 



569 



REG 



RUS 



Regium Donum, 352. 

Repeal, and O'Connell, 57-62; 
movement and 'Young Ire- 
land/ 91. 

Republicanism in England, 381- 
83. 

Rhodes, Cecil, 463; and Jameson 
raid, 466-67; and Salvation 
Army, 525. 

Richardson, Mr., murdered in 
Japan, 253-54. 

Richmond, Duke of, at Board of 
Trade, 303; and army pur- 
chase, 365; President of Coun- 
cil, 1874, 398. 

Richmond Prison, O'Connell in, 
61. 

Richmond taken, 250. 

Ridley, Viscount, 541. 

Riel, Louis, and Red River re- 
bellion, 309. 

Ripon, Lord, and Alabama com- 
mission, 376; resigns Presi- 
dency of Council, 395; Vice- 
roy of India, 432. 

Ritchie, Mr., Home Secretary, 
540. 

Ritualism, 400; in State Church, 
506-08. 

Roberts, Lord, in Afghanis- 
tan, 435-36; South African 
War, 535-37; welcome home, 
545. 

Robson, W. S., 523. 

Roebuck, Mr., not in Parlia- 
ment of 1837, 9; resolution 
supporting Palmerston, 96; 
resolution in Pacifico case, 
96-97; and Ecclesiastical 
Titles Act, 103; Crimean mo- 
tion, 154; carried, 154, 157; 
and Lorcha Arrow, 166; and 
Conspiracy Bill, 203; and 
recognition of the Southern 
States, 248-49; defeated at 
Sheffield, 347. 

Rontgen rays, 543. 

Rose, Sir Hugh, and Ranee of 
Jhansi, 195. 

Rosebery, Lord, Secretary for 



Foreign Affairs, 451, 459; 
Prime Minister, 461. 

Rosenau, Prince Albert's birth- 
place, 40. 

Rosmead, Lord, 533. 

Rothschild, Baron, in House of 
Commons, 210-11. 

Roumania, and Derby, 410-11; 
and Treaty of Berlin, 421-22. 

Roumelia, Eastern, 422. 

Royal British Bank, failure of, 
163. 

Royal William, transatlantic 
voyage of, 18. 

Runjeet Singh and Cashmere, 
46. 

Russell, Lord John, leader of 
House of Commons in 1837, 9; 
character of, 10-11; and term 
'Conservative,' 11; opposed to 
further reform in 1837, 17; 
sends Lord Durham to Canada 
22; and Bedchamber ques- 
tion, 38; and Anti-Corn Law 
League, 72-73; Edinburgh 
letter, 75; fails to form a 
Ministry, 75-76; forms Ad- 
ministration, 84; and Durham 
letter, 101; resigns, 103; re- 
sumes office, 104; and Eccle- 
siastical Titles Act, 102-05; 
and disagreement between the 
Queen and Palmerston, 112- 
13; and Kossuth difficulty, 
114; and Coup d'etat, 116; dis- 
misses Lord Palmerston, 117- 
18; Palmerston's 'tit-for-tat' 
with, 118; Militia Bill, 120-21; 
resigns, 121; conference of 
Liberal members at his house, 
123; at Foreign Office, Coali- 
tion Ministry, 1852, 128; re- 
signs office, 154; fails to form 
Ministry, 155; Colonial Sec- 
retary, 156; goes to Vienna, 
156; resigns, 157; education 
resolutions rejected, 162; and 
Lorcha Arrow, 166; and Ind- 
ian Government, 199, 209; 
and Jews, 210; and Salo- 



57° 



INDEX. 



RUS 



SER 



mons' case, 211-13; at Willis's 
Rooms, 221; Foreign Secre- 
tary, 223; and recognition of 
Southern Confederacy, 240; 
and Alabama, 247; corre- 
spondence with Mr. Adams, 
248; and Mexico, 249; and 
Gortschakoff, on Polish in- 
surrection, 256; and Danes, 
258-59; Reform Bill of, 268; 
forms Government, 275; goes 
to Lords, 276; and Reform 
Bill of 1866, 289; resigns, 292; 
his career, 293; and suspension 
of Habeas Corpus in Ireland, 
311; and Abyssinia, 336; and 
Irish State Church, 345; death 
of, 424-25. 

Russell, Sir Charles, 457. 

Russell, W. H., 149. 

Russia, and Turkish war, with 
Mohammed Ali, 29-30; and 
Afghanistan, 46; and Pacifico 
case, 96; growth of, 134-35; 
destruction of Turkish fleet at 
Sinope, 143; and Sepoy, 176; 
sympathy of, with Northern 
State, 242; and Polish insur- 
rection, 254-57; and Treaty of 
Paris, 373; and Turkey, 410; 
war with Turkey, 417; Treaty 
of San Stefano, 419; of Berlin, 
420-22; and Treaty of Berlin, 
422-23. 



SADLEIR, James and John, 
163. 

Sale, General, and Afghan War, 
52-56. 

Sale, Lady, 52. 

Salisbury, Lord, and Lorcha 
Arrow, 166; and Lowe, 276- 
77; character, 280-81; Indian 
Secretary, 295; resigns on 
'Ten Minutes' Bill, 301-03; 
'Leap in the Dark,' 306; Irish 
State Church, 345; Indian 
Secretary, 397; Public Wor- 
ship Bill, 401; Constantinople 



Conference, 416; Foreign Min- 
ister, 420; at Congress of Ber- 
lin, 421; Prime Minister, 449; 
resigns, 451; takes up office, 
454, 461 ; tribute to Gladstone, 
478; on Compensation to Work- 
men, 486; Prime Minister, 540. 

Salomons, Mr. David, case of, 
211-13. 

Salonica, outbreak at, 410. 

Salvation Army, 525-27. 

San Jacinto and Trent affair, 
243. 

San Juan question, 376-78. 

San Stefano Treaty, 419. 

Sardinia and Crimean War, 158; 
and Congress of Paris, 161. 

Satsuma, Prince, 254. 

Sattara annexed, 175. 

Savannah, Confederate priva- 
teer, 245. 

'Saxon/ term used by O'Con- 
nell, 59. 

Schenck, General, and Alabama 
commission, 376. 

Schleswig - Holstein question, 
257-60. 

School Board system, 361-63. 

Scinde annexed, 65-66. 

Scindia and Indian Mutiny, 193- 
94. 

Scotland, Kirk of, 34-35. 

Scutari, hospitals at, 152; Miss 
Nightingale at, 153. 

Sebastopol, besieged, 147-51, 
153; abandoned, 158; restored 
to Russia, 160. 

Secocoeni, 427. 

Sedan, battle of, 372. 

Sedgwick, Professor, death of, 
389. 

Selborne, Lord, and Ecclesias- 
tical Titles Act, 103; Lorcha 
Arrow, 166; Irish State Church, 
353; Lord Chancellor, 392; 
First Lord of Admiralty, 540. 

Semmes, captain of Alabama, 
246-47. 

Servia and Turkev, 411; at war, 
415; Treaty of Berlin, 421. 



INDEX. 



571 



SEW 

Sewell, Chief Justice, and Cana- 
dian Confederation, 308. 

Sexton, Mr., 456. 

Seymour, Admiral Sir M., bom- 
bards Canton, 165. 

Seymour, Sir Beauchamp, at 
Alexandria, 442; annuity to, 
443; in China, 497. 

Seymour, Sir Hamilton, conver- 
sations with Czar Nicholas, 
137. 

Shaftesbury, Lord, employment 
of women in mines, 62; Fac- 
tories Act, 63; Ellenborough 
despatch, 197; Poland, 255; 
death of, 450. 

Shaw, Miss Flora L., 466-68. 

Sheffield, trades-union outrages 
at, 319-21. 

Sheil, R. L., in Parliament, 1837, 
11. 

Shelton, Brigadier, in Afghan 
War, 48, 50, 53. 

Shepstone, Sir Theophilus, an- 
nexes Transvaal, 428. 

Shere Ali, 426. 

Shore or Condon and Manches- 
ter rescue, 317. 

Sikh wars, 66, 175. 

Simpson, General, at Crimea, 
157-58. 

Sinope, Turkish fleet destroved 
at, 143. 

Slave circulars, 405. 

Slavery, and O'Connell, 53; in 
America, 239-40; abolished, 
251. 

Slidell, Mr., and Trent case, 243. 

Smith, Mr. Justice A. L., 456. 

Smith, Samuel, 510. 

Smith, W. H., elected for West- 
minster, 347; leader of House, 
454. 

Solferino, battle of, 221. 

Soojah, Shah, 46; entry into 
Cabul, 47; death of, 54. 

South Africa, confederation 
scheme, 408; war in, 427-30; 
Republic formed, 435; Com- 
mittee, 466-73; war in, 534-39. 



TAH 

South Australia, 310. 

Spain and Mexico, 249; Franco- 
Prussian War, 371. 

Spanish-American War, 505. 

Spanish marriages, 87-88. 

Spencer, Herbert, and Jamaica 
question, 286. 

Staal, M. de, 315. 

Stamp duty, 28; 227-28. 

Stanhope, Philip, 472. 

Stanley, Colonel, War Secretary, 
420. 

Stanley, Lord — see Derby, Lord. 

Stanley, Mr., discovers Living- 
stone, 388. 

Stephens, James, 314-15. 

Steyn, President, 532. 

St. Leonards, Lord, Lord Chan- 
cellor, 121. 

Stoddart, Colonel, prisoner in 
Bokhara, 56. 

Strikes, Mill on, 323. 

Stroud, Russell on term 'Con- 
servative' at, 8; Conservative 
victory at, 395. 

Sturt, Mrs., in withdrawal from 
Cabul, 52. 

Sugar duties, 87; foreign and 
colonial, 121. 

Sugiyama, M., murdered in 
Pekin, 494. 

Sullivan, Mr. A. M., and Mr. 
Plimsoll, 403. 

Summer palace, destruction of, 
236. 

Sumner, Charles, and Alabama 
claims, 374-75. 

Sumter, Confederate privateer, 
245. 

Sumter Fort taken, 240. 

Suttee, suppression of, 175. 

Swinburne, A. C, and Man- 
chester prisoners, 317. 

Syria, war in, 29; Lebanon dis- 
turbances, 237-38. 



TAHITI, dispute with France 
about, 66. 
Taku forts captured, 494. 



572 



INDEX. 



TAN 



VIC 



TantiaTopee, Nana Sahib's lieu- 
tenant, 186-87; execution of, 
195. 

Tara, Hill of, meeting held by 
O'Connell at, 60. 

Tasmania and transportation, 
167-68; 310. 

Tate Gallery, opened, 544-45. 

Telegraph, postal, 334. 

Telegraphy, wireless, 543-44. 

Tel-el-Kebir, battle of, 442-43. 

Temple, Dr., 510. 

Tennyson, Alfred, and Jamaica 
question, 286. 

Thackeray, death of, 265. 

Theodore of Abyssinia, 335- 
38 ; 

Thesiger, Sir F. — see Chelms- 
ford, Lord. 

Thiers and Mohammed Ali, 30; 
and Commercial Treaty, 227. 

Thomas, Alfred, 479. 

Thornton, Sir E., and Alabama 
commission, 377. 

Tichborne case, 386-87. 

Ticket-of-leave system, 168-70. 

Tien-Tsin, Treaty of, 207, 233- 
35. 

Todleben, General, and Crimean 
War, 162; and Russo-Turkish, 
417. 

Tone, Wolfe, O'Connell on, 59, 
311. 

Tractarians, the, 399. 

'Tracts for the Times,' 32. 

Trades - unions, Sheffield out- 
rages, 319-21 ; account of, 322- 
24. 

Transportation, 167-70. 

Transvaal, annexed, 427-28; 
troubles in, 434-35, 463-64. 

Trent affair, 243-44. 

Trevelyan, G. O., in Parlia- 
ment, 270; resignation of, 
453. 

Trevor, Mrs., in withdrawal 
from Cabul, 52. 

Turgot, and Coup d'etat, 116. 

Turkey, Mohammed Ali, 29-30; 
treachery of Capitan Pasha, 



29; gradual decay of, 132-33; 
antagonism with Russia, 135; 
'sick man,' 137; Kutchuk- 
Kainardji Treaty, 138-40; 
fleet destroyed at Sinope, 143; 
Dardanelles and Bosphorus, 
144-45; Congress of Paris, 
160; Lebanon disturbances, 
237-38; Abdul Aziz in Eng- 
land, 327-28; Herzegovina 
rising, 410-11; death of Abdul 
Aziz, dethronement of Murad, 
accession of Mamid, 412; Bul- 
garian atrocities, 413-14; war 
with Servia, 415; war with 
Russia, 417; Treaty of San 
Stefano, 419; Treaty of Berlin, 
420-22; Secret Treaty with 
England, 423; Cretan troubles 
474-75. 



ULSTER, tenant right, 356-58. 
United Irishman newspaper, 
92. 
United States — see America. 
University Tests Bill, 370. 



yACCINATION Act, 28. 
V Vancouver's Island, 67; and 
confederation, 307. 

Venetia added to Italy, 298. 

Venezuela arbitration, 462-63. 

Vicksburg taken, 249. 

Victor Emanuel, enters Milan, 
221; visits England, 226. 

Victoria, Queen, education, 2; 
accession, 3; affection for 
Melbourne, 6; Bedchamber 
question, 37-39; marriage, 
39-42; attempts on life of, 43- 
44; difficulty with Palmerston, 
111-17; and Dundonald, 238; 
death of Prince Consort, 244- 
45, 288; Jubilee, 457; Diamond 
Jubilee, 464-66; visit to Ire- 
land, 530-31; death of, 547; 
funeral, 547-48. 

Victoria, colony of, 310. 



INDEX. 



573 



VIL 



YOU 



Villiers, Charles, and Anti-Corn 
Law League, 68, 126-27. 

Volunteer movement, 118-20, 
226. 



WALES, PRINCE OF, birth, 
44; illness, 382. 

Walewski, and Coup d'etat, 116- 
17; Orsini plot, 202. 

Wallace Collection, 544. 

Walpole, Mr., Home Secretary, 
207, 294; resigns, 220, 306; 
Reform disturbances, 297, 305; 
retirement of, 331. 

Warren, Sir Charles, 535. 

Webster, Sir Richard, 508. 

Wei-hai-Wei, British port, 492. 

Wellington, Duke of, and Prot- 
estantism of Prince Consort, 
41; opposes opening ports, 74; 
Chartism, 90; 'Who? who?' 
Ministry, 122; and Peel's 
death, 125; death of, 124-26; 
conversation with Czar Nicho- 
las, 136. 

Wensleydale Peerage, 162. 

Westburv, Lord, resigns, 267- 
68; death of, 389. 

Western Australia, 310. 

Wheatstone, Prof., and electric 
telegraph, 12. 

Wheeler, Sir Hugh, at Cawn- 
pore, 182, 185. 

Whiteside and Lorcha Arrow, 
166. 

'Who? who?' Ministry, 122. 

Wilberforce, Bishop, death of, 
388. 



Wilkes, Captain, and Trent, 
243-44. 

William IV., death and charac- 
ter of, 1-2; and Dundonald, 
238. 

Williams, Mr. Justice, and Ala- 
bama commission, 376. 

Willis's Rooms meeting, 221. 

Windham, General, defeated at 
Cawnpore, 194. 

Window tax, partial repeal of 
proposed, 103. 

Wiseman, Cardinal, 100; death 
of, 266. 

Wolff, Dr., and Bokhara prison- 
ers, 57. 

Wolff, Sir Henry, 433. 

Wolseley, Lord, and Red River 
rebellion, 309; Ashantee War, 
396-97; in Egypt, 443; an- 
nuity to, 443. 

Women, International Congress 
of, 512-13. 

Women's rights, 512-13. 

Wood, Sir Charles, Chancellor of 
Exchequer, 84; Admiralty, 
156; Indian Secretary, 223. 

Wood, Sir W. Page — see Hath- 
erley, Lord. 

Workmen's Compensation Act, 
484. 

Wynn, Miss, account of accession 
of Queen Victoria, 2. 



YAKOOB KHAN, 427, 435. 
Yeh, Commissioner, and 
Lorcha Arrow, 164; captured, 
206-07. 



Wilkes, Bishop, death of, 388. \ 'Young Ireland/ 91-94. 



THE END. 



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